Garcia were tacked on the homely walls of barber-shops, in railroad shops, in grubby offices and cargo elevators, and with them savage caricatures of a person called Weyler, and referring bitterly to other persons (who seemed in a bad way) called the reconcentrados.  Raymond wondered what it was all about; bought books to elucidate the matter; took fire with indignation and resentment.  Then came the Maine affair; the suspense of seventy million people eager to avenge their dead; the decision of the court of inquiry; the emergency vote; the preparation for war.  Raymond watched it all with a curious detachment.  He never realised that it could have anything personally to do with him.  The long days in the auditor’s department went on undisturbed for all that the country was arming and the State governors were calling out their quotas of men.  Two of his associates quitted their desks and changed their black coats for army blue.  Raymond admired them; envied them; but it never occurred to him to ask why they should go and he should stay.  It was natural for him to stay; it was inevitable; he was as much a part of the office as the office floor.

One afternoon, going home on the Elevated, he overheard two men talking.

“I don’t know what we’ll do,” said one.

“Oh, there are lots of men,” said the other.

“Men, yes—­but no sailors,” said the first.

“That’s right,” said the other.

“We are at our wits’ end to man the new ships,” said the first.

“What did you total up to-day?” said the other.

His companion shrugged his shoulders.

“Eighty applicants, and seven taken,” he said.

“And those foreigners?”

“All but two!”

“There’s danger in that kind of thing!”

“Yes, indeed, but what can you do?”

The words rang in Raymond’s head.  That night he hardly slept.  He was in the throes of making a tremendous resolution, he who, for forty years, had been tied to his mother’s apron string.  Making it of his own volition, unprompted, at the behest of no one save, perhaps, the man in the car, asserting at last his manhood in defiance of the subjection that had never come home to him until that moment.  He rose in the morning, pale and determined.  He felt a hypocrite through and through as his mother commented on his looks and grew anxious as he pushed away his untasted breakfast.  It came over him afresh how good she was, how tender.  He did not love her less because his great purpose had been taken.  He knew how she would suffer, and the thought of it racked his heart; he was tempted to take her into his confidence, but dared not, distrusting his own powers of resistance were she to say no.  So he kissed her instead, with greater warmth than usual, and left the house with misty eyes.