o for England, because England's got the dibs."

The crowd caught up the jingle as fire licks up grass, and narrow Fleet
Street echoed to the monstrous din of their singing. I began to feel
anxious about getting Constance safely to her flat. Six out of the
fourteen people on the top of our omnibus were noticeably and noisily
tipsy.

"Ah me, Dick, where, where is their British reserve? How I hate that
beloved word cosmopolitan!"

She looked at me, and perhaps that reminded her of something.

"Forgive my familiarity," she said. "John Crondall spoke of you as Dick
Mordan. It's rather a way we have--out there."

I do not remember my exact reply, but it earned me the friendly short
name from her for the future; and, with England tumbling about our ears,
for aught we knew, that, somehow, made me curiously happy. But it was
none the less with a sigh of relief that I handed her in at the outer
door of the mansions in which their flat was situated. We paused for a
moment at the stairs' foot, the first moment of privacy we had known
that evening, and the last, I thought, with a recollection of Mrs. Van
Homrey waiting in the flat above.

I know I was deeply moved. My heart seemed full to bursting. Perhaps the
great news of that day affected me more than I knew. But yet it seemed I
had no words, or very few. I remember I touched the sleeve of her dress
with my finger-tips. What I said was:

"You know I am--you know I am at your orders, don't you?"

And she smiled, with her beautiful, sensitive mouth, while the light of
grave watching never flickered in her eyes.

"Yes, Dick; and thank you!" she said, as we began to mount the stairs.

Yet I was still the assistant editor of _The Mass_--Clement Blaine's
right hand.

XVI

A PERSONAL REVELATION

The thorns which I have reap'd are of the tree
I planted; they have torn me, and I bleed.
I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.

BYRON.

That Sunday night was not one of London's black nights that have been so
often described. The police began to be a little sharp with the people
after nine or ten o'clock, and by midnight the streets were getting
tolerably clear. For the great majority, I believe it had been a day of
more or less pleasurable excitement and amusement. For the minority, who
were better informed, it was a day and night of curious bewilderment and
restless anxiety.

I look