go he had read how
Captain Fensome, of Lady Durwent's house-party, had been killed trying
to rescue his servant in No Man's Land. The sight of Dick Durwent and
Johnston Smyth marching away had been only a spur to more intensive
writing. Then why should that haltingly worded sentence lie like ice
against his heart?

A sharp pain shot through his head.

Stopping his walk, he leaned once more against the windows, and rested
his hot face on the grateful coolness of the glass.

What, he questioned, had he accomplished, after all? He had gained the
ears of millions, but the war was no nearer a close. America was
neutral--that was true. _But why was America neutral_? Had he falsely
idealised his own country? Was her aloofness from the world-war the
result of a passionate, overwhelming realisation of her God-deputed
destiny, as he had imagined?

Hitherto he had paid no attention to the writings in the English press
chronicling the passing of the world's gold reserve from London to New
York. He had ignored the evidence of nation-wide prosperity from the
Atlantic coast to San Francisco. All such things he had dismissed as
unavoidable, unsought material results of America's spiritual
neutrality.

Yet, while the wheels of prosperity were turning at such a pitch, there
was a boy lying dead--about eighteen.

He beat his fist into the palm of his hand. Who was this Schneider who
had purchased the foreign rights of his articles? What sort of a man
was this Benjamin who wanted him to lecture? Were they, as he had
supposed, men of vision who wished to co-operate in achieving the great
unison of Right? . . . Or were they . . . ?

The thought was hideous. Was it possible that those writings, born of
his mental torture, robbing him of every friend he valued---was it
thinkable that they had been used for gross purposes?

His fingers again played rapidly against the windows as he wrestled
with the sudden ugly suspicion. At last, utterly exhausted, he sank
into a chair.

'There is only one thing I can do,' he said decisively; 'return to
America at once. If, as I have thought, her neutrality is in tune with
the highest; if my fellow-countrymen are imbued with such a spirit of
infinite mercifulness that from them will flow the healing streams to
cure the wounds of bleeding Europe, then I have carried a lamp whose
light reflects the face of God. . . . But if . . .'

II.

That night a glorious moonlight silvered t