e were
pretty certain of before. And plain, too.'

"'And much good it will do to us,' retorted the commanding officer. 'The
parties are miles away; the submarine, devil only knows where, ready
to kill; and the noble neutral slipping away to the eastward, ready to
lie!'

"The second in command laughed a little at the tone. But he guessed
that the neutral wouldn't even have to lie very much. Fellows like that,
unless caught in the very act, felt themselves pretty safe. They could
afford to chuckle. That fellow was probably chuckling to himself. It's
very possible he had been before at the game and didn't care a rap for
the bit of evidence left behind. It was a game in which practice made
one bold and successful, too.

"And again he laughed faintly. But his commanding officer was in
revolt against the murderous stealthiness of methods and the atrocious
callousness of complicities that seemed to taint the very source of
men's deep emotions and noblest activities; to corrupt their
imagination which builds up the final conceptions of life and death. He
suffered-------"

The voice from the sofa interrupted the narrator.

"How well I can understand that in him!"

He bent forward slightly.

"Yes. I, too. Everything should be open in love and war. Open as
the day, since both are the call of an ideal which it is so easy, so
terribly easy, to degrade in the name of Victory."

He paused; then went on: I don't know that the commanding officer delved
so deep as that into his feelings. But he did suffer from them--a sort
of disenchanted sadness. It is possible, even, that he suspected himself
of folly. Man is various. But he had no time for much introspection,
because from the southwest a wall of fog had advanced upon his ship.
Great convolutions of vapours flew over, swirling about masts and
funnel, which looked as if they were beginning to melt. Then they
vanished.

"The ship was stopped, all sounds ceased, and the very fog became
motionless, growing denser and as if solid in its amazing dumb
immobility. The men at their stations lost sight of each other.
Footsteps sounded stealthy; rare voices, impersonal and remote, died out
without resonance. A blind white stillness took possession of the world.

"It looked, too, as if it would last for days. I don't mean to say that
the fog did not vary a little in its density. Now and then it would
thin out mysteriously, revealing to the men a more or less ghostly
presentment of th