mplight shining down on her fair hair;
she looked up, startled, and her eyes met Fort's.

"I don't know; I wasn't listening." Something moved in him, a kind of
burning pity, a rage of protection. He said quickly:

"These are times of action. Philosophy seems to mean nothing nowadays.
The one thing is to hate tyranny and cruelty, and protect everything
that's weak and lonely. It's all that's left to make life worth living,
when all the packs of all the world are out for blood."

Noel was listening now, and he went on fervently: "Why! Even we who
started out to fight this Prussian pack, have caught the pack feeling--so
that it's hunting all over the country, on every sort of scent. It's a
most infectious thing."

"I cannot see that we are being infected, Captain Fort."

"I'm afraid we are, Mr. Pierson. The great majority of people are
always inclined to run with the hounds; the pressure's great just now;
the pack spirit's in the air."

Pierson shook his head. "No, I cannot see it," he repeated; "it seems to
me that we are all more brotherly, and more tolerant."

"Ah! monsieur le cure," Fort heard the painter say very gently, "it is
difficult for a good man to see the evil round him. There are those whom
the world's march leaves apart, and reality cannot touch. They walk with
God, and the bestialities of us animals are fantastic to them. The
spirit of the pack, as monsieur says, is in the air. I see all human
nature now, running with gaping mouths and red tongues lolling out, their
breath and their cries spouting thick before them. On whom they will fall
next--one never knows; the innocent with the guilty. Perhaps if you were
to see some one dear to you devoured before your eyes, monsieur le cure,
you would feel it too; and yet I do not know."

Fort saw Noel turn her face towards her father; her expression at that
moment was very strange, searching, half frightened. No! Leila had not
lied, and he had not dreamed! That thing was true!

When presently he took his leave, and was out again in the Square, he
could see nothing but her face and form before him in the moonlight: its
soft outline, fair colouring, slender delicacy, and the brooding of the
big grey eyes. He had already crossed New Oxford Street and was some way
down towards the Strand, when a voice behind him murmured: "Ah! c'est
vous, monsieur!" and the painter loomed up at his elbow.

"Are you going my way?" said Fort. "I go slowly, I'm