a moment," he said, "I must wait. I did not
think it would be like this. I must think of the thing I have to say."

While he was still hesitating there came an agitated messenger with news
that the foremost aeroplanes were passing over Madrid.

"What news of the flying stages?" he asked.

"The people of the south-west wards are ready."

"Ready!"

He turned impatiently to the blank circles of the lenses again.

"I suppose it must be a sort of speech. Would to God I knew certainly the
thing that should be said! Aeroplanes at Madrid! They must have started
before the main fleet.

"Oh! what can it matter whether I speak well or ill?" he said, and felt
the light grow brighter.

He had framed some vague sentence of democratic sentiment when suddenly
doubts overwhelmed him. His belief in his heroic quality and calling he
found had altogether lost its assured conviction. The picture of a
little strutting futility in a windy waste of incomprehensible
destinies replaced it. Abruptly it was perfectly clear to him that this
revolt against Ostrog was premature, foredoomed to failure, the impulse
of passionate inadequacy against inevitable things. He thought of that
swift flight of aeroplanes like the swoop of Fate towards him. He was
astonished that he could have seen things in any other light. In that
final emergency he debated, thrust debate resolutely aside, determined
at all costs to go through with the thing he had undertaken. And he
could find no word to begin. Even as he stood, awkward, hesitating,
with an indiscreet apology for his inability trembling on his lips,
came the noise of many people crying out, the running to and fro of
feet. "Wait," cried someone, and a door opened. Graham turned, and the
watching lights waned.

Through the open doorway he saw a slight girlish figure approaching. His
heart leapt. It was Helen Wotton. The man in yellow came out of the
nearer shadows into the circle of light.

"This is the girl who told us what Ostrog had done," he said.

She came in very quietly, and stood still, as if she did not want to
interrupt Graham's eloquence.... But his doubts and questionings fled
before her presence. He remembered the things that he had meant to say.
He faced the cameras again and the light about him grew brighter. He
turned back to her.

"You have helped me," he said lamely--"helped me very much.... This is
very difficult."

He paused. He addressed himself to the unseen multitudes who s