Selwyn crumpled the letter in his hand and hurled it into the fireplace. Plunging his hands into his pockets, he paced the room as he had done that night when Watson had called to tell him he was going to enlist. He was seized with an incoherent fury at it all--the inhumanity of it--the degradation of the whole thing. But through the formless cloud of his thoughts there gleamed the one incessant phrase 'about eighteen, with sort of golden hair, and light, light blue eyes.' Why should that groove his consciousness so deeply? He had heard, unmoved, of the death of Malcolm Durwent. A month ago he had read how Captain Fensome, of Lady Durwent's house-party, had been killed trying to rescue his servant in No Man's Land. The sight of Dick Durwent and Johnston Smyth marching away had been only a spur to more intensive writing. Then why should that haltingly worded sentence lie like ice against his heart? A sharp pain shot through his head. Stopping his walk, he leaned once more against the windows, and rested his hot face on the grateful coolness of the glass. What, he questioned, had he accomplished, after all? He had gained the ears of millions, but the war was no nearer a close. America was neutral--that was true. _But why was America neutral_? Had he falsely idealised his own country? Was her aloofness from the world-war the result of a passionate, overwhelming realisation of her God-deputed destiny, as he had imagined? Hitherto he had paid no attention to the writings in the English press chronicling the passing of the world's gold reserve from London to New York. He had ignored the evidence of nation-wide prosperity from the Atlantic coast to San Francisco. All such things he had dismissed as unavoidable, unsought material results of America's spiritual neutrality. Yet, while the wheels of prosperity were turning at such a pitch, there was a boy lying dead--about eighteen. He beat his fist into the palm of his hand. Who was this Schneider who had purchased the foreign rights of his articles? What sort of a man was this Benjamin who wanted him to lecture? Were they, as he had supposed, men of vision who wished to co-operate in achieving the great unison of Right? . . . Or were they . . . ? The thought was hideous. Was it possible that those writings, born of his mental torture, robbing him of every friend he valued---was it thinkable that they had been used for gross purposes? His fingers again played rapidly against the windows as he wrestled with the sudden ugly suspicion. At last, utterly exhausted, he sank into a chair.