to any future call for
active service at home or abroad, in case of British need. Here was a
shield of which I knew both sides well. The thing impressed me more than
I can tell, or most folk would understand nowadays. I knew so well how
the god of business (which served to cover all individual pursuit of
money or pleasure) would have been invoked to prove the utter
impracticability of this--one short year before. I looked back toward my
Fleet Street days, and I thanked God for the awakening of England, which
had included my own awakening.

My return to London was a matter of considerable personal interest to
me, for Constance Grey was there, having been recalled by John Crondall
from her active superintendence of nursing at Portsmouth.

XVI

HANDS ACROSS THE SEA

There is a Pride whose Father is Understanding, whose Mother is
Humility, whose Business is the Recognition and Discharge of Duty.
That is the true Pride.--MERROW'S _Essays of the Time_.

I was impatient to reach London, but I should have been far more
impatient if I had known that Constance Grey stood waiting to meet me on
the arrival platform at Waterloo.

"They told me your train at the office," she said, as I took one of her
hands in both of mine, "and I could not resist coming to give you the
news. Don't say you have had it!"

"No," I told her. "My best news is that Constance has come to meet me,
and that I am alive to appreciate the fact very keenly. Another trifling
item is that, so far as I can tell, practically every member of _The
Citizens_ would respond to-morrow to a call for active service in
Timbuctoo--if the call came. I tell you, Constance, this is not reform,
it's revolution that has swept over England. We call our membership
three and a half millions; it's fifty millions, really. They're all
_Citizens_, every mother's son of them; and every daughter, too."

We were in a cab now.

"But what about my news?" said Constance.

"Yes, tell me, do. And isn't it magnificent about the Navy? How about
those 'Terrible' fellows? Constance, do you realize how all this must
strike a man who was scribbling and fiddling about disarmament a year
ago? And do you realize who gave that man decent sanity?"

"Hush! It wasn't a person, it was a force; it was the revolution that
brought the change."

"Ah, well, God bless you, Constance! I wish you'd give me the news."

"I will, directly you give me a chance to get in a word. Well,