y had never fought. No one knew what
they might do, with excited men inside them; few even cared to
speculate. They were great driving things shaped like spear-heads
without a shaft, with a propeller in the place of the shaft."

"Steel?"

"Not steel."

"Aluminum?"

"No, no, nothing of that sort. An alloy that was very
common--as common as brass, for example. It was called--let me
see--" He squeezed his forehead with the fingers of one hand. "I
am forgetting everything," he said.

"And they carried guns?"

"Little guns, firing high explosive shells. They fired the
guns backwards, out of the base of the leaf, so to speak, and
rammed with the beak. That was the theory, you know, but they had
never been fought. No one could tell exactly what was going to
happen. And meanwhile I suppose it was very fine to go whirling
through the air like a flight of young swallows, swift and easy.
I guess the captains tried not to think too clearly what the real
thing would be like. And these flying war machines, you know, were
only one sort of the endless war contrivances that had been
invented and had fallen into abeyance during the long peace. There
were all sorts of these things that people were routing out and
furbishing up; infernal things, silly things; things that had never
been tried; big engines, terrible explosives, great guns. You know
the silly way of these ingenious sort of men who make these things;
they turn 'em out as beavers build dams, and with no more 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 Evesham'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 didn't 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 do