choked with smoke, beneath the flying stages, to learn there when retreat was hopeless the ancient mysteries of warfare.  And overhead save for a few sharpshooters upon the roof spaces and for a few bands and threads of vapour that multiplied and darkened towards the evening, the day was a clear serenity.  Ostrog it seems had no bombs at command and in all the earlier phases of the battle the flying machines played no part.  Not the smallest cloud was there to break the empty brilliance of the sky.  It seemed as though it held itself vacant until the aeroplanes should come.

Ever and again there was news of these, drawing nearer, from this Spanish town and then that, and presently from France.  But of the new guns that Ostrog had made and which were known to be in the city came no news in spite of Graham’s urgency, nor any report of successes from the dense felt of fighting strands about the flying stages.  Section after section of the Labour-Societies reported itself assembled, reported itself marching, and vanished from knowledge into the labyrinth of that warfare.  What was happening there?  Even the busy ward leaders did not know.  In spite of the opening and closing of doors, the hasty messengers, the ringing of bells and the perpetual clitter-clack of recording implements, Graham felt isolated, strangely inactive, inoperative.

His isolation seemed at times the strangest, the most unexpected of all the things that had happened since his awakening.  It had something of the quality of that inactivity that comes in dreams.  A tumult, the stupendous realisation of a world struggle between Ostrog and himself, and then this confined quiet little room with its mouthpieces and bells and broken mirror!

Now the door would be closed and Graham and Helen were alone together; they seemed sharply marked off then from all the unprecedented world storm that rushed together without, vividly aware of one another, only concerned with one another.  Then the door would open again, messengers would enter, or a sharp bell would stab their quiet privacy, and it was like a window in a well built brightly lit house flung open suddenly to a hurricane.  The dark hurry and tumult, the stress and vehemence of the battle rushed in and overwhelmed them.  They were no longer persons but mere spectators, mere impressions of a tremendous convulsion.  They became unreal even to themselves, miniatures of personality, indescribably small, and the two antagonistic realities, the only realities in being were first the city, that throbbed and roared yonder in a belated frenzy of defence and secondly the aeroplanes hurling inexorably towards them over the round shoulder of the world.

There came a sudden stir outside, a running to and fro, and cries.  The girl stood up, speechless, incredulous.

Metallic voices were shouting “Victory!” Yes it was “Victory!”

Bursting through the curtains appeared the man in yellow, startled and dishevelled with excitement, “Victory,” he cried, “victory!  The people are winning.  Ostrog’s people have collapsed.”