"How I hate Oscar Wilde's plays," he said, and put it behind the top row of the shelf. "I don't want Stephen to see the book."

"Which were you reading?"

"An Ideal Husband'-ordinary melodrama poor at that, and insincere

wit."

"I thought it was famous."
"Pish!" said the tutor.

"I hated it, too," said Norah. “But I thought I must be wrong."

He smiled at her without speaking, and she found herself warmed and elated by his sympathy with her mental process.

"It is wonderful not to have people despise the way I think," she said to herself, and then she told the tutor about her luncheon.

He became very angry. The jest about the "hand and mouth disease" caused him to forget her presence for a time. He walked about the room and talked so fiercely about those who speak

without thinking, and bear false witness, that Stephen moved in his sleep, and Mrs. Kingsley woke with a jerk, muttering, "I shall go to sleep if Henry does n't ring soon."

When the room was quiet again, Mr. Marks looked at his watch. "We ought to hear something soon."

He walked to the window, and, drawing the curtain aside, looked out. "Houses are still lighted up and down the street," he said. "The city is waiting -the world is waiting." He paused. "It's rather a tremendous hour to be alive in," he added.

After this he came to her side and boldly sat down. Taking up one of the surgical dressings, he examined it. But Norah worked on without lifting her eyes. In her mind was the thought, “It is more interesting to be alive to-night with him than with Henry."

Putting down the dressing Mr. Marks said, after a pause: "It's odd being here like this. How still the room is, and

strange! The pictures, furniture, and bric-a-brac seem like presences." Norah looked up at his bidding. "How still it is," he said again. "Against the unconsciousness of sleeping persons, one's own consciousness seems to stand vivid as a flame."

So he spoke now and then in his virile, flexible voice to which the low tone lent semblance of intimacy.

It was the doorbell which finally broke the silence. Mr. Marks went down to let in Henry, who appeared with him at

once.

"The telephone is out of order. I have been ringing twenty minutes," he said with irritation.

"The message the message!" cried Norah.

"It's to be war," said Henry.

Stephen and Mrs. Kingsley were now wide awake. "War- Hurray - Hurray!" cried the boy, and leapt over a low table. "Golly! I wish I were old enough to go! So old Marks was right, and

Norah was right, and they both have more sense than most people. I said that right along, so I have more sense than most people, too."

"Be quiet, Stephen," ordered his mother. "We want to hear Henry."

Mr. Marks made Stephen sit with him on the sofa and kept the boy quiet with a hand on his knee.

"Tell us about it, Henry," asked Aunt Frances. "Was the message good and vigorous?"

"People seem to think it's a good message so far as we know to-night. We never said he could n't write good notes."

"Of course, we must feel public opinion has forced him to take a stand at last," said Mrs. Kingsley. "But if he has yielded with a good grace, it will look better before the world if we accept him with good grace. It is a comfort to think that we are no longer cowards before the nations, and so we can go to bed on that. I suppose everybody is happy."

"War! War!" thought Norah to herself, under the impact of terrific excite

ment.

"Perhaps Norah is not happy. Perhaps she is a pacifist, and does n't approve of using force at any time," suggested Henry, casting upon Norah a look of somber suspicion.

Norah had thought it all out laboriously, and now uttered herself with timidity but firmness, while her cold, small hands twisted each other. "Nations," she said, "seem to develop morally more slowly than persons do. International honor is not so strict as personal honor, and even persons have not yet got to a place where they and the things they most care for can be safe without being protected by force. Cities have not got so. When we can find cities where weak people and precious things don't need the protection of the police, why, then we can believe the nations can go unpoliced, and so I am not a pacifist." A slight pause followed this. The