event it all! The damned little imbecile was up to his neck
in the drama of the thing, he liked to trumpet it out, he goggled
round at us. 'Then it is war!' he said. Richover shrugged his
shoulders. I made some slight protest and gave in. . . . Afterward
I dreamt of him.

"What a lot we were! All a little scared at ourselves--all,
as it were, instrumental. . . .

"And it's fools like that lead to things like this!" He jerked his
head at that dead man near by us.

"It will be interesting to know what has happened to the world. . . .
This green vapor--queer stuff. But I know what has happened to me.
It's Conversion. I've always known. . . . But this is being a fool.
Talk! I'm going to stop it."

He motioned to rise with his clumsy outstretched hands.

"Stop what?" said I, stepping forward instinctively to help him.

"War," he said in his great whisper, putting his big hand on my
shoulder but making no further attempt to arise, "I'm going to put
an end to war--to any sort of war! And all these things that must
end. The world is beautiful, life is great and splendid, we had
only to lift up our eyes and see. Think of the glories through which
we have been driving, like a herd of swine in a garden place. The
color in life--the sounds--the shapes! We have had our jealousies,
our quarrels, our ticklish rights, our invincible prejudices, our
vulgar enterprise and sluggish timidities, we have chattered and
pecked one another and fouled the world--like daws in the temple,
like unclean birds in the holy place of God. All my life has been
foolishness and pettiness, gross pleasures and mean discretions--all.
I am a meagre dark thing in this morning's glow, a penitence, a
shame! And, but for God's mercy, I might have died this night--like
that poor lad there--amidst the squalor of my sins! No more of
this! No more of this!--whether the whole world has changed or no,
matters nothing. WE TWO HAVE SEEN THIS DAWN! . . ."

He paused.

"I will arise and go unto my Father," he began presently, "and will
say unto Him------"

His voice died away in an inaudible whisper. His hand
tightened painfully on my shoulder and he rose. . . .

CHAPTER THE SECOND

THE AWAKENING

Section 1

So the great Day came to me.

And even as I had awakened so in that same dawn the whole world
awoke.

For the whole world of living things had been overtaken by the
same tide of insensibility; in an hour, at the touch of this new
gas in