low, heavy forehead; eyes in which shone the
unmistakable light; broad, firm mouth; fair hair, left unusually long.
In figure the man was short and stout. His collar had parted, and a
black bow of unusual size was drooping from his shoulder. He was
slightly out of breath, too, as though he had but recently recovered
from some strenuous exercise.

"I will save you from speculations--I am Henry Selingman," he
pronounced.

Maraton held out his hand.

"Selingman!" he exclaimed. "It is your photographs, of course, then.
We have never met."

"Never until to-night," Selingman admitted. "When I heard that you were
in England, I made up my mind to come over. To-night seemed to me
propitious. I wanted to understand this marvellous power of yours of
which so many people have written. Nothing has been exaggerated. The
message which I have struggled to deliver to the world through my
poetry, my plays, such prose as I have ventured upon, you yourself can
tear from your heart and throw to the people's own ears. . . .
Forgive me--I, too, will smoke. I will drink wine, also," he added,
ringing the bell. "I had a dozen friends to help me, but every bone in
my body aches with the struggle to escape. You maddened them, those
people. It was magnificent."

He ordered champagne from the attendant and began to smoke a long black
cigar, nervously and quickly.

"To-night I shall write of this," he went on. "I have lived for
forty-five years and I have hunted all over the world, and in my study I
have conjured up all the visions a man may, but never yet has there been
anything like this. The black hillside a mass of soft black velvet,
jewelled like a woman's gown, the red fires from the blasting furnaces,
the shower of sparks from a thousand torches, the glow upon the fog
poisoned sky, those faces--God, how white! Never in my life have I seen
the writing of the finger of the Messiah as I saw it to-night! It has
been the hour of a lifetime. Maraton, over there, man, our toilers are
toilers indeed, but not like that. It isn't stamped into them. No,
they're not branded."

"Over there?" Maraton repeated.

"Belgium, Germany," Selingman continued, "Germany chiefly. Our
Socialism has done better for us than that. It has kindled a little
fire in the heart of the men, and from its warmth has sprung something
of that self-respect which will be the seed of the new humanity. I want
you over there, Maraton. I want to show you. Your heart will warm