sense of the rivers they're going to divert and the
lands they're going to flood!

"As we went down the winding stepway to our hotel again in the twilight I
foresaw it all: I saw how clearly and inevitably things were driving for
war in Gresham's silly, violent hands, and I had some inkling of what war
was bound to be under these new conditions. And even then, though I knew
it was drawing near the limit of my opportunity, I could find no will to
go back."

He sighed.

"That was my last chance.

"We did not go into the city until the sky was full of stars, so we walked
out upon the high terrace, to and fro, and--she counselled me to go back.

"'My dearest,' she said, and her sweet face looked up to me, 'this is
Death. This life you lead is Death. Go back to them, go back to your
duty--'

"She began to weep, saying between her sobs, and clinging to my arm as she
said it, 'Go back--go back.'

"Then suddenly she fell mute, and glancing down at her face, I read in an
instant the thing she had thought to do. It was one of those moments when
one _sees_.

"'No!' I said.

"'No?' she asked, in surprise, and I think a little fearful at the answer
to her thought.

"'Nothing,' I said, 'shall send me back. Nothing! I have chosen. Love, I
have chosen, and the world must go. Whatever happens, I will live this
life--I will live for _you_! It--nothing shall turn me aside;
nothing, my dear one. Even if you died--even if you died--'

"'Yes?' she murmured, softly.

"'Then--I also would die.'

"And before she could speak again I began to talk, talking eloquently--as
I _could_ do in that life--talking to exalt love, to make the life we
were living seem heroic and glorious; and the thing I was deserting
something hard and enormously ignoble that it was a fine thing to set
aside. I bent all my mind to throw that glamour upon it, seeking not only
to convert her but myself to that. We talked, and she clung to me, torn
too between all that she deemed noble and all that she knew was sweet. And
at last I did make it heroic, made all the thickening disaster of the
world only a sort of glorious setting to our unparalleled love, and we two
poor foolish souls strutted there at last, clad in that splendid delusion,
drunken rather with that glorious delusion, under the still stars.

"And so my moment passed.

"It was my last chance. Even as we went to and fro there, the leaders of
the south and east were gathering their resolve, and th