I was good for nothing there, simply good for nothing at all.  I tried to talk to the nice, sensible English women, and I could not.  I knew Milly was displeased with me for not keeping up my end, but I was sodden with thrills.  I had sat through a dinner next to General Cochrane, the Donald Cochrane who was the most dramatic figure of the world war of sixty years ago.  It has always moved me to meet persons who even existed at that time.  I look at them and think what intense living it must have meant to pick up a paper and read—­as the news of the day, mind you—­that Germany had entered Belgium, that King Albert was fighting in the trenches, that Von Kluck was within seventeen miles of Paris, that Von Kluck was retreating—­think of the rapture of that—­Paris saved!—­that the Germans had taken Antwerp; that the Lusitania was sunk; that Kitchener was drowned at sea!  I wonder if the people who lived and went about their business in America in those days realized that they were having a stage-box for the greatest drama of history?  I wonder.  Terror and heroism and cruelty find self-sacrifice on a scale which had never been dreamed, which will never, God grant, need to be dreamed on this poor little racked planet again.  Of course, there are plenty of those people alive yet, and I’ve talked to many and they remember it, all of them remember well, even those who were quite small.  And it has stirred me simply to look into the eyes of such an one and consider that those eyes read such things as morning news.  The great war has had a hold on me since I first heard of it, and I distinctly remember the day, from my father, at the age of seven.

“Can you remember when it happened, father?” I asked him.  And then:  “Can you remember when they drove old people out of their houses—­and killed them?”

“Yes,” said my father.  And I burst into tears.  And when I was not much older he told me about Donald Cochrane, the boy who saved England.

It was not strange to my own mind that I could not talk commonplaces now, when I had just spent an hour tailing to the man who had been that historic boy—­the very Donald Cochrane.  I could not talk commonplaces.

Milly’s leisurely voice broke my meditation.  “I’m sorry that my cousin, Virginia Fox, should have such bad manners, Lady Andover,” she was drawling.  “She was brought up to speak when spoken to, but I think it’s the General who has hypnotized her.  Virginia, did you know that Lady Andover asked you—­” And I came to life.

“It was Miss Fox who hypnotized the General, I fancy,” said Lady Andover most graciously, considering I had overlooked her existence a second before.  “He had a word for no one else during dinner.”  I felt myself go scarlet; it had pleased the Marvelous Person, then, to like me a little, perhaps for the youth and enthusiasm in me.

With that the men straggled into the room and the tall grizzled head of my hero, his lined face conspicuous for the jagged, glorious scar, towered over the rest.  I saw the vivid eyes flash about, and they met mine; I was staring at him, as I must, and my heart all but jumped out of me when he came straight to where I stood, my back against the bookcase.