, fanning liberty into a flame. What
if the flame sputters a little! Nothing can change the spoken word. Your
message will have gone forth...."

"To what end? It may be. It may be. You know I said, when you told me
of these things dear God! but that was scarcely a score of hours ago!--I
said that I had not your faith. Well--at any rate there is nothing to do
now...."

"You have not my faith! Do you mean--? You are sorry?"

"No," he said hurriedly, "no! Before God--no!" His voice changed.
"But--. I think--I have been indiscreet. I knew little--I grasped too
hastily...."

He paused. He was ashamed of this avowal. "There is one thing that makes
up for all. I have known you. Across this gulf of time I have come to
you. The rest is done. It is done. With you, too, it has been something
more--or something less--"

He paused with his face searching hers, and without clamoured the
unheeded message that the aeroplanes were rising into the sky of Amiens.

She put her hand to her throat, and her lips were white. She stared
before her as if she saw some horrible possibility. Suddenly her
features changed. "Oh, but I have been honest!" she cried, and then,
"Have I been honest? I loved the world and freedom, I hated cruelty and
oppression. Surely it was that."

"Yes," he said, "yes. And we have done what it lay in us to do. We have
given our message, our message! We have started Armageddon! But now--.
Now that we have, it may be our last hour, together, now that all these
greater things are done...."

He stopped. She sat in silence. Her face was a white riddle.

For a moment they heeded nothing of a sudden stir outside, a running
to and fro, and cries. Then Helen started to an attitude of tense
attention. "It is--," she cried and stood up, speechless, incredulous,
triumphant. And Graham, too, heard. Metallic voices were shouting
"Victory!" Yes it was "Victory!" He stood up also with the light of a
desperate hope in his eyes.

Bursting through the curtains appeared the man in yellow, startled and
dishevelled with excitement. "Victory," he cried, "victory! The people
are winning. Ostrog's people have collapsed."

She rose. "Victory?" And her voice was hoarse and faint.

"What do you mean?" asked Graham. "Tell me! What?"

"We have driven them out of the under galleries at Norwood, Streatham
is afire and burning wildly, and Roehampton is ours. Ours!--and we have
taken the aeropile that lay thereon."

For an instant Grah