in every
generation. The hour of rebirth for the mass of men still lingers. Will
it ever come--the time when all the young men see visions and all the
old men dream dreams?

I stirred uneasily in my chair and looked up. I had not heard him enter
the room, but Ascher stood beside me.

"I am glad you are here," he said. "I hoped you would be; but I am very
late."

"Yes," I said, "you are very late. It is long after midnight. Where have
you been? What have you been doing?"

Ascher sat down opposite to me, and for some time he did not speak. I
made no attempt to press my questions. If Ascher wanted to talk to me he
would do so in his own time and in the way he chose. I supposed that he
did want to talk to me. He had asked me to his house. He had bidden me
wait for him.

"I have no right," said Ascher at last, "to trouble you with my
difficulties. I ought to think them out and fight them out for myself;
but it will be a help to me if I can put them into words and feel that
you are listening to me."

He paused for so long that I felt I must make some reply to him, though
I did not know what to say.

"I don't suppose I can be of any use to you," I said, "but if I can----"

"Perhaps you can," said Ascher. "You can listen to me at least. Perhaps
you can do more. It is a large call to make upon your friendship to
treat you in this manner, but--I am in some ways a lonely man."

I have always, since the day I first met him, liked and respected
Ascher. When he spoke about his loneliness I felt a sudden wave of pity
for him. It seems a strange thing to say, but at that moment I had a
strong affection for the man.

"What I partly foresaw and greatly dreaded has come," he said. "I am
certain now that war is inevitable, a great war, almost perhaps in the
end quite worldwide."

"And England?" I said, "is England, too----?"

"Almost inevitably."

"Germany?" I said.

Ascher nodded.

I was throbbing with excitement. For the moment I felt nothing but a
sense of exultation, strangely out of harmony with the grave melancholy
with which Ascher spoke. I suppose the soldier instinct survives in me,
an inheritance from generations of my forefathers, all of whom have worn
swords, many of whom have fought. We have done our part in building
up the British Empire, we Irish gentlemen, fighting, as Virgil's bees
worked, ourselves in our own persons, but not for our own gain. There is
surely not one battlefield of all where the flag