As the guest of the evening rose to speak he was greeted with prolonged applause, which broke into ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow,’ and ended in a college football yell.  During it Selwyn sat motionless, his alert mind trying to decipher the difference between Watson’s face and the others.  It was not only that they were, almost without exception, clean-shaven, and that Watson wore a small military moustache; the dissimilarity went beyond that.  Although he was obviously nervous, Watson’s eyes looked steadily ahead as those of a man who has faced death and looked on things that never were intended for human vision.  It had left him aged—­not aged as with years, but by an experience which made all the keen-faced men about him seem clever precocities whose mentalities had outstripped the growth of their souls.

And studying this phenomenon, Selwyn became conscious of the American business face.

Although differing in colouring and shape, practically every face showed lips thin and straight, eyes narrowing and restlessly on the qui vive, the nervous, muscular tension from the battle for supremacy in feverish competition, the dull, leaden complexion of those who disregard the sunshine—­these combined in a clear impression of extraordinary abilities and capacities with which to meet the affairs of the day.  What one missed in all their faces was a sense of the centuries.

No—­not in all.  At the table opposite to Selwyn was Gerard Van Derwater, whose self-composure and air of formal courtliness made him, as always, a man of distinctive, almost lonely, personality.

‘Thank you very much,’ said Watson, as the applause and singing died away.  His fingers pressed nervously on the table, and his first words were uneven and jerky.  ’I needn’t tell you I am not a speaker.  I have a great message for you chaps, but I may not be able to express it.  That was my reason for asking to speak to ex-Harvard men.  I did it because I knew I should have men who thought as I did—­men who looked on things in the same way as myself.  I knew you would be patient with me, and I was certain you would give an answer to the question which I bring from France.’

He paused momentarily, and shifted his position, but his face had gained in determination.  A few of his listeners encouraged him audibly, but the remainder waited to see what lay behind the intensity of his manner.

‘I don’t want pity for my wound,’ he resumed.  ’The soldier who comes out of this war with only the loss of an arm is lucky.  Put that aside.  I want you to listen to me as an American who loves his country just as you do, and who once was proud to be an American.’

He raised his head defiantly, and when he spoke again, the indecision and the faltering had vanished.