Two minutes more and the party of six had settled into deep chairs, into a mammoth davenport, before a blazing fire of spruce and birch.  Cigars, liqueurs, coffee, the things men love after dinner, were there; one had the vaguest impression of two vanishing Japanese persons who might or might not have brought trays and touched the fire and placed tiny tables at each right hand; an atmosphere of completeness was present, one did not notice how.  One settled with a sigh of satisfaction into comfort, and chose a cigar.  One laughed to hear the Judge pound away at the Senator.

“It’s all a game.”  Dr. Rutherford turned to the Russian.  “They’re devoted old friends, not violent enemies, General.  The Senator stirs up the Judge by taking impossible positions and defending them savagely.  The Judge invariably falls into the trap.  Then a battle.  Their battles are the joy of the Century Club.  The Senator doesn’t believe for an instant that the war held back democracy.”

At that the Senator whirled.  “I don’t?  But I do.—­Don’t smoke that cigar, Rutherford, on your life.  Peter will have these atrocities.  Here—­Kaki, bring the doctor the other box.—­That’s better.—­I don’t believe what I said?  Now listen.  How could the fact that the world was turned into a military camp, officers commanding, privates obeying, rank, rank, rank everywhere throughout mankind, how could that fail to hinder democracy, which is in its essence the leveling of ranks?  Tell me that!”

The doctor grinned at the Russian.  “What about it, General?  What do you think?”

The General answered slowly, with a small accent but in the wonderfully good English of an educated Russian.  “I do not agree with the Sena-torr,” he stated, and five heads turned to listen.  There was a quality of large personality in the burr of the voice, in the poise and soldierly bearing, in the very silence of the man, which made his slow words of importance.  “I believe indeed that the Sena-torr is partly—­shall I say speaking for argument?”

The Senator laughed.

“The great war, in which all of us here had the honor to bear arms—­that death grapple of tyranny against freedom—­it did not hold back the cause of humanity, of democracy, that war.  Else thousands upon thousands of good lives were given in vain.”

There was a hushed moment.  Each of the men, men now from fifty to sixty years old, had been a young soldier in that Homeric struggle.  Each was caught back at the words of the Russian to a vision of terrible places, of thundering of great guns, of young, generous blood flowing like water.  The deep, assured tones of the Russian spoke into the solemn pause.

“There is an episode of the war which I remember.  It goes to show, so far as one incident may, where every hour was crowded with drama, how forces worked together for democracy.  It is the story of a common man of my country who was a private in the army of your country, and who was lifted by an American gentleman to hope and opportunity, and, as God willed it, to honor.  My old friend the Judge can tell that episode better than I. My active part in it was small.  If you like”—­the dark foreign eyes flashed about the group—­“if you like I should much enjoy hearing my old friend review that little story of democracy.”