“Please don’t apologize, Mr. Talliaferro,” she said the next morning, when he met her sorrowfully. “It is I who should apologize. For a moment you made me see vividly the dangers up yonder, but I put it all away and had a real rest. Tell me about the field and Oku.” Talliaferro was inclined to talk very little, as a rule, but he had brooded deeply upon his failure in this service, and it was rather a relief to speak--with Noreen Cardinegh to listen. “At least, we have added to the gaiety of nations with our silence in the field,” he said. “It has been the silence of the Great Wall yonder. We knew nothing even of the main strategy, which was familiar to all outside who cared to follow the war. Japanese officers were assigned to overhear what we said to one another. They even opened our personal mail. The field-telegraph was hot day and night with the war-business, so that our messages were hung up for days, even with the life cut out of them. And then when Oku drove into action we were always back with the reserves--not that I think a correspondent can do a battle classic for his cable-editor, simply because he mingles first hand with shrapnel; but we had only the sun and stars to go by as to which was north and south. Think of it, and the man who writes a war-classic must have a conception of the whole land and sea array, and an inner force of his own, to make his sentences shine----” She smiled a little and straightened her shoulders to breathe deeply the good sea air. They were walking out toward the Wall. “But suppose he has the big conception, as you say, and then goes into the heart of the thing”--her voice became tense--“where the poor brave brutes are coming together to die?” “He’ll unquestionably do it better,” said Talliaferro, regarding her blowing hair with satisfaction to the artistic sense he cultivated. “Physical heroism is cheap--the cheapest utility of the nations--but it is not without inspiration to watch.... We had neither--neither facts nor blood with Oku.” * * * * *