2. OF LOVE BUT NOT OF MARRIAGE 193 3. AFTER TEN DAYS 203 4. CINDERELLA 219 5. THE MAN OF THE MOMENT 234 Book IV.--Merely Men and Women 1. AFTER THE DEBACLE 247 2. THE SHADOW IS LIFTED 263 3. THE MARIGOLDS TO THE SUN 272 4. SURRENDER AND AFTERWARDS 284 5. TWO SHIPS UPON THE SEA 306 BOOK I THE CHALLENGE SWORDS RELUCTANT CHAPTER I GABRIELLE SILVESTER WRITES A LETTER I Gabrielle returned from the Town Hall where the meeting was held, just after ten o'clock, and was glad to see the fire burning brightly in her room. She remembered that she would never have thought of such a luxury as a fire in her bedroom prior to her visit to New York. All agreed that it had been a very successful meeting, and that real, convincing work had been done. She herself could say, in the privacy of her own room, that the excitements of such gatherings had become a necessity to her since the strenuous days in America, and perhaps to her father also. How changed her life since she first set foot on the deck of the _Oceanic_ and began to know a wider world! England had seemed but a garden upon her return and its people but half awake. She had a vivid memory of the rush and roar of distant cities, of strange faces and new races, but chiefly of a discovery of self which at once frightened and perplexed her. Would it be possible to accept without complaint the even tenor of that obscure life in Hampstead which she had suffered willingly but seven months ago? She knew that it would not, and could answer for her father also. A call had come to him and to her. She had been sure of it at the meeting, but of its nature she had yet to be wholly convinced. Gordon Silvester, the most eloquent preacher among the Congregationalists, had gone to America at the bidding of a famous millionaire, there to bear witness to the brotherhood of man and the bond between the peoples. The achievement of the great treaty between America and the Motherland had drawn together the leading intellects of the two countries, and had culminated in that mighty assemblage in New York which had stood before the altar of the Eternal Peace and closed, as it believed for ever, the Temple of the twin-headed Janus. With the minister had gone Gabrielle, his only child, and thus for the first time during her three and twenty years had she seen any world but that of the suburban parish in which Gordon Silvester laboured.