ent who
plays the game. They crowded round him in the club smoking room, for
these were his last few minutes. They had dined him, toasted him, and
the club loving cup had been drained to his success and his safe return.
For Lovell was a popular member of this very Bohemian gathering, and he
was going to the Far East, at a few hours' notice, to represent one of
the greatest of English dailies.

A pale, slight young man, who stood at this right hand, was speaking.
His name was Walter Aynesworth, and he was a writer of short stories--a
novelist in embryo.

"What I envy you most, Lovell," he declared, "is your escape from the
deadly routine of our day by day life. Here in London it seems to me
that we live the life of automatons. We lunch, we dine, we amuse or we
bore ourselves, and we sleep--and all the rest of the world does the
same. Passion we have outgrown, emotion we have destroyed by analysis.
The storms which shake humanity break over other countries. What is
there left to us of life? Civilization ministers too easily to our
needs, existence has become a habit. No wonder that we are a tired
race."

"Life is the same, the world over," another man remarked. "With every
forward step in civilization, life must become more mechanical. London
is no worse than Paris, or Paris than Tokyo."

Aynesworth shook his head. "I don't agree with you," he replied. "It
is the same, more or less, with all European countries, but the Saxon
temperament, with its mixture of philosophy and philistinism, more than
any other, gravitates towards the life mechanical. Existence here has
become fossilized. We wear a mask upon our faces; we carry a gauge for
our emotions. Lovell is going where the one great force of primitive
life remains. He is going to see war. He is going to breathe an
atmosphere hot with naked passion; he is going to rub shoulders with men
who walk hand in hand with death. That's the sort of tonic we all want,
to remind us that we are human beings with blood in our veins, and not
sawdust-stuffed dolls."

Then Lovell broke silence. He took his pipe from his mouth, and he
addressed Aynesworth.

"Walter," he said, "you are talking rot. There is nothing very complex
or stimulating about the passion of war, when men kill one another
unseen; where you feel the sting in your heart which comes from God
knows where, and you crumple up, with never a chance to have a go at the
chap who has potted you from the trenches, or behind