"What is efficiency?" Larry Strangways asked. "It's the best means of doing what you want to do, isn't it? Well, then, efficiency is a matter of your ambitions. There's the efficiency of the watch-dog who loves his master and guards the house, and there's the efficiency of the tiger in the jungle. One has one's choice." It was not a question, he continued to reason, as to who began this war--whether it was a king or a czar or a kaiser. It was not a question of English and German competition, or of French or Russian aggression, or fear of it. The inquiry went back of all that. It went back beyond modern Europe, beyond the Middle Ages, beyond Rome and Assyria and Egypt. It was a battle of principles rather than of nations--the last great struggle between reason and force--the fight between the instinct of some men to rule other men and the contrary instinct, implanted more or less in all men, that they shall hold up their heads and rule themselves. It was part of the impulse of the human race to forge ahead and upward. The powers that worked against liberty had been arming themselves, not merely for a generation or a century, but since the beginning of time, for just this trial of strength. The effort would be colossal and it would be culminating; no human being would be spared taking part in it. If America didn't come in of her own accord she would be compelled to come in; and meantime he, Larry Strangways, was going of free will. He didn't express it in just this way. He put it humbly, colloquially, with touches of slang. "I've got to be on the job, Miss Adare, and there are no two ways about it," were the words in which he ended. "I've just run down from New York to speak about--about the money; and--and to bid you good-by." He glanced toward Hugh. "Possibly, in view of the fact that I'm so soon to be off--and may not come back, you know," he added, with a laugh--"Mr. Brokenshire won't mind if--if we shake hands." I can say to Hugh's credit that he gave us a little while together. Going down the steps he had mounted, he called back, over his shoulder: "I'm going off for a walk, dear. I shall return in exactly fifteen minutes; and I expect you to be ready for me then." But when we were alone we had little or nothing to say. I recall that quarter of an hour as a period of emotional paralysis. I knew and he knew that each second ticked off an instant that all the rest of our lives we should long for in vain; and yet we didn't know how to make use of it. We began to wander slowly up the slope. We did it aimlessly, stopping when we were only a few yards away from the steps. We talked about the money. We talked about his going to Canada. We talked about the breaking off, so far as we knew, of all intercourse between Mr. Grainger and Mrs. Brokenshire. But we said nothing about ourselves. We said nothing about anything but what was superficial and trite and lame.