. I was here. I heard that the negroes
were to come to London to guard you and to keep the people down--to keep
you a prisoner. And I stopped it. I came out and told the people. And
you are Master still."

Graham glanced at the black lenses of the cameras, the vast listening
ears, and back to her face. "I am Master still," he said slowly, and the
swift rush of a fleet of aeroplanes passed across his thoughts.

"And you did this? You, who are the niece of Ostrog."

"For you," she cried. "For you! That you for whom the world has waited
should not be cheated of your power."

Graham stood for a space, wordless, regarding her. His doubts and
questionings had 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 again towards her.

"You have saved me," he said; "you have saved my power. And the battle
is beginning. God knows what this night will see--but not dishonour."

He paused. He addressed himself to the unseen multitudes who stared upon
him through those grotesque black eyes. At first he spoke slowly. "Men
and women of the new age," he said; "You have arisen to do battle for
the race... There is no easy victory before us."

He stopped to gather words. The thoughts that had been in his mind
before she came returned, but transfigured, no longer touched with the
shadow of a possible irrelevance. "This night is a beginning," he cried.
"This battle that is coming, this battle that rushes upon us to-night,
is only a beginning. All your lives, it may be, you must fight. Take no
thought though I am beaten, though I am utterly overthrown."

He found the thing in his mind too vague for words. He paused
momentarily, and broke into vague exhortations, and then a rush of
speech came upon him. Much that he said was but the humanitarian
commonplace of a vanished age, but the conviction of his voice touched
it to vitality. He stated the case of the old days to the people of the
new age, to the woman at his side. "I come out of the past to you,"
he said, "with the memory of an age that hoped. My age was an age of
dreams--of beginnings, an age of noble hopes; throughout the world
we had made an end of slavery; throughout the world we had spread the
desire and anticipation that wars might cease, that all men and women
might live nobly, in freedom and peace. ... So we hoped in the days that
are past. And what of those hopes? How is it