al relations were submerged. There came
messengers to tell that a great fleet of aeroplanes was rushing between
the sky and Avignon. He went to the crystal dial in the corner and
assured himself that the thing was so. He went to the chart room and
consulted a map to measure the distances of Avignon, New Arawan, and
London. He made swift calculations. He went to the room of the Ward
Leaders to ask for news of the fight for the stages--and there was no
one there. After a time he came back to her.

His face had changed. It had dawned upon him that the struggle was
perhaps more than half over, that Ostrog was holding his own, that
the arrival of the aeroplanes would mean a panic that might leave him
helpless. A chance phrase in the message had given him a glimpse of the
reality that came. Each of these soaring giants bore its thousand
half savage negroes to the death grapple of the city. Suddenly his
humanitarian enthusiasm showed flimsy. Only two of the Ward Leaders were
in their room, when presently he repaired thither, the Hall of the Atlas
seemed empty. He fancied a change in the bearing of the attendants in
the outer rooms. A sombre disillusionment darkened his mind. She looked
at him anxiously when he returned to her.

"No news," he said with an assumed carelessness in answer to her eyes.

Then he was moved to frankness. "Or rather--bad news. We are losing. We
are gaining no ground and the aeroplanes draw nearer and nearer."

He walked the length of the room and turned.

"Unless we can capture those flying stages in the next hour--there will
be horrible things. We shall be beaten.

"No!" she said. "We have justice--we have the people. We have God on our
side."

"Ostrog has discipline--he has plans. Do you know, out there just now I
felt--. When I heard that these aeroplanes were a stage nearer. I felt
as if I were fighting the machinery of fate."

She made no answer for a while. "We have done right," she said at last.

He looked at her doubtfully. "We have done what we could. But does this
depend upon us? Is it not an older sin, a wider sin?"

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"These blacks are savages, ruled by force, used as force. And they have
been under the rule of the whites two hundred years. Is it not a race
quarrel? The race sinned--the race pays."

"But these labourers, these poor people of London--!"

"Vicarious atonement. To stand wrong is to share the guilt."

She looked keenly at him, aston