ause were but mercenaries scarred in the service of its enemies. For
generations, for centuries, man had fought on; crying for liberty,
dreaming it was won, waking to find himself the slave of the new forces
he had generated, burning and being burnt for the same beliefs under
different guises, calling his instinct ideas and his ideas revelations;
destroying, rebuilding, falling, rising, mending broken weapons,
championing extinct illusions, mistaking his failures for achievements
and planting his flag on the ramparts as they fell. And as the vision of
this inveterate conflict rose before him, Odo saw that the beauty, the
power, the immortality, dwelt not in the idea but in the struggle for
it.

His resistance yielded as this sense stole over him, and with an almost
physical relief he felt himself drawn once more into the familiar
current of emotion. Yes, it was better after all to be one of that great
unconquerable army, though, like the Trojans fighting for a phantom
Helen, they might be doing battle for the shadow of a shade; better to
march in their ranks, endure with them, fight with them, fall with them,
than to miss the great enveloping sense of brotherhood that turned
defeat to victory.

As the conviction grew in him, Fulvia's words regained their lost
significance. Through the set mask of language the living thoughts
looked forth, old indeed as the world, but renewed with the new life of
every heart that bore them. She had left the abstract and dropped to
concrete issues: to the gift of the constitution, the benefits and
obligations it implied, the new relations it established between ruler
and subject and between man and man. Odo saw that she approached the
question without flinching. No trace remained of the trembling woman who
had clung to him the night before. Her old convictions repossessed her
and she soared above human fears.

So engrossed was he that he had been unaware of a growing murmur of
sound which seemed to be forcing its way from without through the walls
of the ancient building. As Fulvia's oration neared its end the murmur
rose to a roar. Startled faces were turned toward the doors of the
council-chamber, and one of the Duke's gentlemen left his seat and made
his way through the audience. Odo sat motionless, his eyes on Fulvia. He
noticed that her face paled as the sound reached her, but there was no
break in the voice with which she uttered the closing words of her
peroration. As she ended,