"What do you think of the news?" she said, without a word of preliminary greeting. I felt more than a little abashed at this; for, truth to tell, I really had given no serious thought to the news. I had observed its reception by the public as a spectator might. But, in the first place, I had been early warned that it was all a hoax; and then, too, like so many of my contemporaries, I was without the citizen feeling altogether, so far as national interests were concerned. I had grown to regard citizenship as exclusively a matter of domestic politics and social progress, municipal affairs, and the like. I never gave any thought to our position as a people and a nation in relation to foreign Powers. "Oh, well," I said, "it's an extraordinary business, isn't it? I have just come from the Demonstration in Hyde Park. It was practically squashed by the arrival of the special editions. The people seemed pretty considerably muddled about it, so I suppose those who arranged it all may be said to have scored their point." "So you don't believe it?" "Well, I believe it is generally admitted to be a gigantic hoax, is it not?" "But, my dear Mr. Mordan, how--how wonderful English people are! You, your own self; what do _you_ think about it? But forgive me for heckling. Won't you sit down? Or will you come into the study? Aunt is in there." We went into the study, a cheerful, bright room, with low wicker chairs, and a big, littered writing-table. "Mr. Mordan doesn't believe it," said Constance Grey, when I had shaken hands with her aunt. "Doesn't he?" said that strong, plain-spoken woman. "Well, I fancy there are a good many more by the same way of thinking, who'll have their eyes opened pretty widely by this time to-morrow." "Then you take the whole thing seriously?" I asked them. Somehow, my own thoughts had become active in the presence of these women, and were racing over everything that I had seen and heard that day, from the moment of my chat with Wardle, before sunrise, in Holborn. "I don't see any other way to take it," said Mrs. Van Homrey, with laconic emphasis. "Do you?" she added. "Well, you see, I did not begin by taking your view. My first word of it was just before dawn this morning, from a newspaper man in Holborn; and, somehow--well, you know, the general idea seems to be that the whole thing is an elaborate joke worked up by the Navy League, or somebody, as a counter-stroke to the Disarmament Demonstration--to teach us a lesson, and all that, you know."