“Poor chap,” he said, with an immense pity in his voice. “So you’re involved too? I wish it had been otherwise. Well, well; I couldn’t hope to keep it from her much longer at the best. But I’m very, very sorry. She’ll take it so hard. Her type never looks at these things the way we do.” He paused and looked at me keenly in the light of the terrace lamps. When he spoke once more, his voice sounded very weary. “Stand by me, Jack. Get your part ready in time. Don’t flinch because of this. I’m nearly at the end of my tether.” I could not trust myself to speak. We shook hands in silence, and he went up the steps into the house. CHAPTER XVI In the Nitrogen Area I have no wish to dwell overmuch upon my own affairs in this narrative; for they formed a mere ripple on the surface of the torrent of events which was bearing all of us along in its course. Yet to exclude them entirely would be to omit something which is of importance; for they must have influenced my outlook upon the situation as a whole and possibly made me view it through eyes different from those which I had used before. My dreams and desires had come to the ground almost ere they were in being; and what made it more bitter to me was that I felt they had been crushed, not on their merits, but merely as subsidiaries which had shared in the collapse of a more central matter. I guessed that Elsa had, to some extent, at any rate, shared my feelings; and it was this which made the downfall of my hopes all the harder to bear. Try as I would, I could find no reason behind her attitude; and even now, looking back upon that time, I cannot appreciate her motives. In the whole affair of the Nitrogen Area I had been guided by purely intellectual considerations. Nordenholt himself had advised me to keep a tight rein upon any feelings which might divert me from this course. And I was thus, perhaps, less able to appreciate her standpoint then than I would have been a few months earlier. On her side emotion, and not intellect, was the guiding star. The picture of starving millions which had broken upon her without warning had overpowered her normally clear brain. Thus there lay between us a gulf which nothing seemed capable of filling. I thought, and still believe, that emotion is a will-o’-the-wisp by which alone no man can steer a course; but it is useless to deny its power when once it has laid its influence upon a mind. Even had she given me a chance, I doubt if I would have tried to reason with her; and she gave me no chance. I never saw her alone; and when she met me perforce or by accident, she treated me practically as a stranger. All the long evenings of planning and dreaming had gone out of our lives. As soon as I could make an opportunity, I questioned Nordenholt as to the state of affairs. He answered me perfectly frankly.