“You will not return, Alan? Why, where are you going? Surely you are not going to leave Aeria again, and at such a time as this; you, who are already one of the chosen, a first-born son of the Master’s line!” It was Alan’s mother who spoke. She had entered the room just as he had uttered the last sentence, and the ominous words struck a sudden chill to her heart. She came towards him with her eyes full of tears of apprehension and her hands stretched out pleadingly towards him. Now that the first terror of the crisis was past, and there was one definite, however slender, hope of safety, she clung to it passionately for Alan’s sake with a faith that made light of all the fearful difficulties which lay in the way of its realisation. In the sublime egotism of her mother-love the fate of a world shrank into insignificance in comparison with the one chance of safety for her only son. “Yes, mother,” replied Alan, taking her hands in his and bending down until his lips touched her upturned brow. “I am going to leave Aeria again to proclaim the Truce of God against the hour of His judgment, and I have just told my father that I shall not return”-- “No, no, my boy, you must not say that. You must not rob us of the one ray of light in this awful darkness that is falling upon us--of our one hope in all the world’s despair!” cried his mother, letting go his hands and laying her own upon his shoulders as she looked up into his face with eyes that were now overflowing with tears. “You will not leave us now, surely, for if we lost you we could not even take the chance of life ourselves, for it would not be worth having.” “Nor would it be worth having, my mother, either to you or to me,” he replied, gently laying his hand on hers, “if I lived and left untried the attempt that it is my plain duty to make. You would see me a lonely and unmated man among the parents of the new race, a man with a shadow upon his name, and the memory of an unfulfilled duty behind him. “Remember that it is I who have brought the guilt of blood back again upon earth. Would you have me outlive all the millions of my fellow-creatures with the knowledge that I had not made one effort to bring back that peace on earth which was lost through me before the last summons comes to all humanity?” “Alan is right, wife,” interrupted the President, before she could make any reply to her son’s appeal. “It is his duty to save, if he can, his fellow-creatures from being overwhelmed in the midst of their madness and their sin. Remember that, according to our faith, as all these millions, who are now drunk with battle and slaughter, and mad with the rage of conquest and revenge, end this life, so they must begin the next. “There is time for him to speak and for them to hear, but whether they hear him or not, if he has spoken he has done his duty. Is it not better that if needs be he should die doing it than live and leave it undone?”