emotion. The prevailing mood impressed Evelyn
Colcord strongly, and, glancing down the table, she started at her
accuracy in divining the cause. Simec's place was vacant. She recalled
now that but a moment before he had been summoned to the telephone. She
had noted his temporary departure only as one notices the lifting of a
saffron mist.

Unquestionably, the absorbing topic had gripped the imagination of all.
It was sufficiently theoretical, so absolutely hypothetical, in fact, so
utterly impossible, that Evelyn's alert intellect found pleasure in
grappling with it.

"I wonder--!" Her elbows were on the table, her chin upon her hands. "Of
course, it's awfully easy to say; but I wonder how it would be if we
really faced such a question. Just consider, Arnold,"--she was smiling
at Bates--"the superhuman firing squad is outside the door; the
superhuman agent stands at your side ready to push the button and end
the war as the shots ring out. You picture it, of course, with your
imagination. Well, sir, what do you say?"

Bates grimaced, twisting the stem of his wine-glass in his fingers.

"Well, one can say only what he _thinks_ he would do. It's so absurd
that I can't visualize your picture--not even with my imagination. But
it seems to me--it _seems_ that I would gladly make the sacrifice."

Doctor Allison, who had been scowling at the ceiling, passing his
fingers thoughtfully through his sparse gray hair, sighed deeply.

"That's just it; how could one possibly tell? The mind adapts itself to
situations, I suppose; in fact, of course it does. It's altogether
difficult, sitting at this table with its food and color and light and
excellent company, to place yourself in the position Nicholas has
devised. It's simply flying from the very comfortable and congenial and
normal present into a dark limbo that is deucedly uncomfortable,
uncongenial, and abnormal. I can't go beyond what I've already said; I
don't know whether I'd do it or not."

"You'd like to, of course," suggested Mrs. Dane.

"Oh, of course I'd _like_ to," was the reply. "The point I make is
whether I could or not; I don't _know_."

"Well"--the young woman paused--"I'm not going to put the question to
my husband because I wouldn't let Jerry do it, even if he were willing."

"Oh, come now, Bess!" grinned Dane.

"Well, I wouldn't, and I imagine I'd have some rights in the matter."

"Now we're getting back to Simec's _hostia honoraria_ and _hostia
piacu