od for anything he soon adapts himself to them. For the time
the struggle is terrible. No cheapness of cynicism will persuade a young
man that he does not suffer genuine anguish when under this pang of
misprized love. But the sooner he knows the worst the more soon is he
likely to be able to fight his way out of the deeps of his misery.

Hamilton did not quite realise the fact as yet--perhaps did not realise
it at all--but the friendly voice in his ear, the friendly touch on his
arm, that bade him come out into the light and live once again a life of
hope, was the voice and the touch of Dolores Paulo. And for her part she
knew it just as little as he did.

CHAPTER XVIII

HELENA KNOWS HERSELF, BUT NOT THE OTHER

Decidedly Gloria was coming to the front again--in the newspapers, at
all events. The South American question was written about, telegraphed
about, and talked about, every day. The South American question was for
the time the dispute between Gloria and her powerful neighbour, who was
supposed to cherish designs of annexation with regard to her. It is a
curious fact that in places like South America, where every State might
be supposed to have, or indeed might be shown to have, ten times more
territory than she well knows what to do with, the one great idea of
increasing the national dignity seems to be that of taking in some vast
additional area of land. The hungry neighbour of Gloria had been an
Empire, but had got rid of its Emperor, and was now believed to be
anxious to make a fresh start in dignity by acquiring Gloria, as if to
show that a Republic could be just as good as an Empire in the matter of
aggression and annexation. Therefore a dispute had been easy to get up.
A frontier line is always a line that carries an electric current of
disputes. There were some questions of refugees, followers of Ericson,
who had crossed the frontier, and whose surrender the new Government of
Gloria had absurdly demanded. There were questions of tariff, of duties,
of smuggling, all sorts of questions, which, after flickering about
separately for some time, ran together at last like drops of
quicksilver, and so formed for the diplomatists and for the newspapers
the South American question.

What did it all mean? There were threats of war. Diplomacy had for some
time believed that the great neighbour of Gloria wanted either war or
annexation. The new Republic desired to vindicate its title to
respectability in th