'No, Smith.'

'You haven't been out to dinner, sir.'

'I am not hungry.'

'Better let me make you a cup of tea with some toast, and perhaps boil
an egg.'

'N--no, thanks, Smith. Well, perhaps you might make some coffee, with
a little buttered toast, and just leave them here.'

'Very good, sir.'

Although less than a year had elapsed since Austin Selwyn had first
dined at Lady Durwent's home, experience, which is more cruel than
time, had marked him as a decade of ordinary life could not have done.
His mind had been subjected to a burning ordeal since summer, and his
drawn features and shadowed eyes showed the signs of inward conflict.

As he had said of himself, all his previous experiences and education
were but a novitiate in preparation for the great moment when truth
challenged his consciousness and illuminated a path for him to follow.
From an intellectual dilettante, a connoisseur of the many fruits which
grace life's highway, he had become a single-purposed man aflame with
burning idealism. From the sources of heredity the spirit of the
Netherlands fighting against the yoke of Spain, and the instinct of
revolt which lies in every Celtic breast, flowed and mingled with his
own newly awakened passion for world-freedom.

He had left Roselawn with a formal good-bye taken of the whole family
together. He had avoided the eyes of Elise, and she had made no
attempt to alter the impersonal nature of the parting. Reaching
London, he had been offered these rooms in St. James's Square by an
American, resident in London, whose business compelled him to go to New
York for an indefinite period. As Selwyn felt the need for absolute
aloofness, he had gladly accepted.

Hardly waiting to unpack his 'grips,' he at once began his battle of
the written word, his crusade against the origin and the fruits of
Ignorance as shown by the war.

Always a writer of sure technique and facile vocabulary, he let the
intensity of his spirit focus on the subject. He knew that to make his
voice heard above the clamour of war his language must have the
transcendent quality of inspiration. No composer searching for the
_motif_ of a great moving theme ever approached his instrument with
deeper emotional artistry than Selwyn brought to bear on the language
which was to ring out his message.

He felt that words were potential jewels which, when once the rays of
his mind had played upon them, would be lit with the fire of magic.
W