The dream vanished—nay, became a reality with another meaning, which for a moment she could not comprehend. The crowd about her swayed, hesitated, and eddied like a stream that has been checked by some unexpected force. A low murmur rose like the first breath of the hurricane. "What is it?" Nora asked. "What has happened?" She forgot where she was. She spoke in English, and the man next her answered as though he understood, as though he had not even noticed that she had addressed him in a foreign language. His young face was crimson with exultation. "They say there is to be war!" he answered hoarsely. "They say there is to be war!" And then she understood, then the reality of it bore down upon her with the crushing weight of a horrible revelation. She tried to force a passage for herself out of this crowd of enemies, but like a straw in the swirl of a whirlpool she was swept back. And in that moment of helplessness the hatred which had lain smouldering burst into full flame in Nora’s heart. Reckless and defiant, she fought against the seething mass of humanity, and for her the struggle was a real thing. She pitted herself against them all; alone amongst those thousands, she felt herself indued with superhuman strength and courage. In her exultation she could have cried aloud: "You fools, you poor fools, who dare to rise against US—US, the elect of God among the nations!" It was a moment prescient of victory, unshadowed by a single doubt or fear. A moment! Then the murmur burst into a great shout, the crowd broke asunder, and to the rattle of drums, the shrill voice of the pipes, a regiment of Infantry passed through, the thunder of their march sounding like some mighty accompaniment to the high notes of the warlike music. No confusion, no hurry, the officers at the head of their companies, grave, resolute, filled with the consciousness of their great calling; the men silent, their eyes fixed ahead as though the enemy lay straight before them, awaiting the final struggle. What it was Nora could not, in that moment of conflicting emotion, clearly analyse. Something had fallen like an icy hand upon her courage. Those faces that passed so close to her through the driving snow, column after column, those healthy, weather-beaten faces so full of life and strength, those broad-shouldered figures, erect, sturdy, swinging forward as though one soul, one mind governed each and all alike—they had made her afraid. She felt herself flung back by a huge pitiless Juggernaut, before which her strength broke like a frail reed. She turned away, sick and trembling, and as she did so her eyes fell on the man who had retained his place at her side. "_Ach, du lieber Gott!_" he said, as though she had spoken to him. "That was my regiment—the 115th. Perhaps I shall be called in—I also have been a soldier."