There was nothing but the strip of black veiling between her lips and mine when a sudden flash that might have come out of heaven threw me back with a start. It was there above us—the great beacon—landlike—homelike—the New World—the new work—the new problems to be solved—the new duties toward mankind to be hammered home—while thankful voices were murmuring round us: “Sandy Hook!” _CHAPTER XXIV_ I never knew the compulsion exercised by organized life till I found it settling round me, with an even distribution like that of the weight of the atmosphere on the body, paralyzing my will and making it impotent. No more than I could throw off the atmosphere could I be free from this force for a second. It began with my arrival on the dock, where Sterling Barry had come to meet his daughter. I had seen him often enough before, though I had never known him otherwise than in the way called touch-and-go. A ruddy, portly, handsome fellow of sixty-odd, with eyes that had passed on their torch to his daughter’s, he must in early life have been retiring and diffident, for his general approach now had that forced jovial note that verges on the boisterous. “Hello! Hello!” he cried, as he lilted up to where I stood with Lovey in the Custom House Section M. “Alive and kicking, what? Couldn’t kill you. Tried, didn’t they?” he went on, looking me over. “Not but what it might have been worse, of course. Billy Townsend’s son’ll never come back at all, poor chap. Fine young fellow, with a bee in his bonnet about aviation. Would go—and now you see! Well, we’ve got you back and we’re going to keep you. What do you know about that?” I replied that as things were I was afraid I had no choice but to stay. “And if you want a job come to me. Some big things doing. Country never so prosperous. Lots of business for every one—even for poor old nuts like us. Well, so long! Come and see us. Mrs. Barry will want to hear you talk. Awfully keen on the war, she is, and that sort of thing. Bit down in the mouth now over this Rumania business. Sad slump that, very.” I said that it only left the more for us to do. “Got your hands full, what? They do seem to put it over on you, don’t they? Ah, well, we won’t see you licked. We’ll keep out of the war as war; but you’ve got our sympathy. Watchful waiting—that’s the new ticket, you know. Can do a lot with that.” With his light, dancing step he was waltzing away again when he suddenly returned.