amation at Westminster, and Mabel had received the news of it at
first with absolute incredulity.

Then, when there was no longer any doubt that he had declared the
extermination of the Supernaturalists to be a possible necessity, there
had been a terrible scene between husband and wife. She had said that
she had been deceived; that the world's hope was a monstrous mockery;
that the reign of universal peace was as far away as ever; that
Felsenburgh had betrayed his trust and broken his word. There had been
an appalling scene. He did not even now like to recall it to his
imagination. She had quieted after a while, but his arguments, delivered
with infinite patience, seemed to produce very little effect. She
settled down into silence, hardly answering him. One thing only seemed
to touch her, and that was when he spoke of the President himself. It
was becoming plain to him that she was but a woman after all at the
mercy of a strong personality, but utterly beyond the reach of logic. He
was very much disappointed. Yet he trusted to time to cure her.

The Government of England had taken swift and skilful steps to reassure
those who, like Mabel, recoiled from the inevitable logic of the new
policy. An army of speakers traversed the country, defending and
explaining; the press was engineered with extraordinary adroitness, and
it was possible to say that there was not a person among the millions of
England who had not easy access to the Government's defence.

Briefly, shorn of rhetoric, their arguments were as follows, and there
was no doubt that, on the whole, they had the effect of quieting the
amazed revolt of the more sentimental minds.

Peace, it was pointed out, had for the first time in the world's history
become an universal fact. There was no longer one State, however small,
whose interests were not identical with those of one of the three
divisions of the world of which it was a dependency, and that first
stage had been accomplished nearly half-a-century ago. But the second
stage--the reunion of these three divisions under a common head--an
infinitely greater achievement than the former, since the conflicting
interests were incalculably more vast--this had been consummated by a
single Person, Who, it appeared, had emerged from humanity at the very
instant when such a Character was demanded. It was surely not much to
ask that those on whom these benefits had come should assent to the will
and judgment of Him through