V.
Although Dorinda would have been astonished had she discovered it, the years after Nathan's death were the richest and happiest of her life. They were years of relentless endeavour, for a world war was fought and won with the help of the farmers; but they were years which rushed over her like weathered leaves in a storm. To the end, the war came no nearer to her than a battle in history. There was none of the flame-like vividness that suffused her mother's memories of the starving years and the burning houses of the Confederacy. Only when she saw victory in terms of crops, not battles, could she feel that she was part of it.
In the beginning the Germans had seemed less a mortal enemy than an evil spirit at large, and she had fought them as her great-grandfather might have fought a her
