erything," he
said.

"And they carried guns?"

"Little guns, firing high explosive shells. They fired the guns
backwards, out of the base of the leaf, so to speak, and rammed with the
beak. That was the theory, you know, but they had never been fought. No
one could tell exactly what was going to happen. And meanwhile I suppose
it was very fine to go whirling through the air like a flight of young
swallows, swift and easy. I guess the captains tried not to think
too clearly what the real thing would be like. And these flying war
machines, you know, were only one sort of the endless war contrivances
that had been invented and had fallen into abeyance during the long
peace. There were all sorts of these things that people were routing out
and furbishing up; infernal things, silly things; things that had never
been tried; big engines, terrible explosives, great guns. You know the
silly way of these ingenious sort of men who make these things; they
turn 'em out as beavers build dams, and with no more sense of the rivers
they're going to divert and the lands they're going to flood!

"As we went down the winding stepway to our hotel again, in the
twilight, I foresaw it all: I saw how clearly and inevitably things
were driving for war in Evesham's silly, violent hands, and I had some
inkling of what war was bound to be under these new conditions. And even
then, though I knew it was drawing near the limit of my opportunity, I
could find no will to go back."

He sighed.

"That was my last chance.

"We didn't go into the city until the sky was full of stars, so we
walked out upon the high terrace, to and fro, and--she counselled me to
go back.

"'My dearest,' she said, and her sweet face looked up to me, 'this is
Death. This life you lead is Death. Go back to them, go back to your
duty--.'

"She began to weep, saying, between her sobs, and clinging to my arm as
she said it, 'Go back--Go back.'

"Then suddenly she fell mute, and, glancing down at her face, I read in
an instant the thing she had thought to do. It was one of those moments
when one SEES.

"'No!' I said.

"'No?' she asked, in surprise, and I think a little fearful at the
answer to her thought.

"'Nothing,' I said, 'shall send me back. Nothing! I have chosen. Love,
I have chosen, and the world must go. Whatever happens I will live this
life--I will live for YOU! It--nothing shall turn me aside; nothing, my
dear one. Even if you died--even if you died--