verwhelmed him, so,
sitting flat on the grass, hat off and the hill wind furrowing his
bright crisp hair, he began, naively, like a schoolboy; and Eileen lay
watching him, touched and amused at his eager interest in reading aloud
to her this mass of co-ordinated fact and detail.

There was, in her, one quality to which he had never appealed in
vain--her loyalty. Confident of that, and of her intelligence, he wasted
no words in preliminary explanation, but began at once his argument in
favour of a native military establishment erected on the general lines
of the British organisation in India.

He wrote simply and without self-consciousness; loyalty aroused her
interest, intelligence sustained it; and when the end came, it came too
quickly for her, and she said so frankly, which delighted him.

At her invitation he outlined for her the succeeding chapters with terse
military accuracy; and what she liked best and best understood was
avoidance of that false modesty which condescends, turning technicality
into pabulum.

Lying there in the fragrant verdure, blue eyes skyward or slanting
sideways to watch his face, she listened, answered, questioned, or
responded by turns; until their voices grew lazy and the light reaction
from things serious awakened the gaiety always latent when they were
together.

"Proceed," she smiled; "_Arma virumque_--a noble theme, Captain Selwyn.
Sing on!"

He shook his head, quoting from "The Dedication":

"Arms and the Man!
A noble theme I ween!
Alas! I cannot sing of these, Eileen;
Only of maids and men and meadow-grass,
Of sea and tree and woodlands where I pass--
Nothing but these I know, Eileen--alas!

* * * * *

Clear eyes, that lifted up to me
Free heart and soul of vanity;
Blue eyes, that speak so wistfully--
Nothing but these I know, alas!"

She laughed her acknowledgment, and lying there, face to the sky, began
to sing to herself, under her breath, fragments of that ancient
war-song:

"Le bon Roi Dagobert
Avait un grand sabre de fer;
Le grand Saint Eloi
Lui dit: 'O mon Roi
Votre Majeste
Pourrait se blesser!'
'C'est vrai,' lui dit le Roi,
'Qu'on me donne un sabre de bois!'"

"In that verse," observed Selwyn, smiling, "lies the true key to the
millennium--international disarmament and moral suasion."

"Nonsense," she said lazily; "the mille