“I will come,” Dominey replied in spiritless fashion.  “It will be better than a music hall, at any rate.  I am not at all sure, Seaman, that the hardest part of my task over here will not be this necessity for self-imposed amusements.”

His companion struck the table gently but impatiently with his clenched fist.

“Man, you are young!” he exclaimed.  “You are like the rest of us.  You carry your life in your hands.  Don’t nourish past griefs.  Cast the memory of them away.  There’s nothing which narrows a man more than morbidness.  You have a past which may sometimes bring the ghosts around you, but remember the sin was not wholly yours, and there is an atonement which in measured fashion you may commence whenever you please.  I have said enough about that.  Greatness and gaiety go hand in hand.  There!  You see, I was a philosopher before I became a professor of propaganda.  Good!  You smile.  That is something gained, at any rate.  Now we will take a taxicab to Holborn and I will show you something really humorous.”

At the entrance to the town hall, the two men, at Seaman’s instigation, parted, making their way inside by different doors.  Dominey found a retired seat under a balcony, where he was unlikely to be recognised from the platform.  Seaman, on the other hand, took up a more prominent position at the end of one of the front rows of benches.  The meeting was by no means overcrowded, over-enthusiastic, over-anything.  There were rows of empty benches, a good many young couples who seemed to have come in for shelter from the inclement night, a few sturdy, respectable-looking tradesmen who had come because it seemed to be the respectable thing to do, a few genuinely interested, and here and there, although they were decidedly in the minority, a sprinkling of enthusiasts.  On the platform was the Duke, with civic dignitaries on either side of him; a distinguished soldier, a Member of Parliament, a half-dozen or so of nondescript residents from the neighbourhood, and Captain Bartram.  The meeting was on the point of commencement as Dominey settled down in his corner.

First of all the Duke rose, and in a few hackneyed but earnest sentences introduced his young friend Captain Bartram.  The latter, who sprang at once into the middle of his subject, was nervous and more than a little bitter.  He explained that he had resigned his commission and was therefore free to speak his mind.  He spoke of enormous military preparations in Germany and a general air of tense expectation.  Against whom were these preparations?  Without an earthly doubt against Germany’s greatest rival, whose millions of young men, even in this hour of danger, preferred playing or watching football or cricket on Saturday afternoons to realising their duty.  The conclusion of an ill-pointed but earnest speech was punctuated by the furtive entrance into the hall of a small boy selling evening newspapers, and there was a temporary diversion from any interest