saved the child; no one but Ferguson dreamed that he could have. Indeed, an ordinary man, in Ferguson's place, would n't have supposed he could. It was only that brain, working like lightning, working as no plain man's could, that had made the calculation and seen. There were no preliminary seconds lost in surprise or shock, you see. Ferguson's mind had n't been jarred from its pace for an instant. The thing had happened too quickly for any one-except Ferguson to understand what was going on. Therefore he ought to have laid that super-normal brain under the wheels, of course!

'Ferguson was so sane, himself, that he could n't understand, even after he had been engaged six months, our little everyday madnesses. It never occurred to him, when he got back to the girl and she began all sorts of hysterical questions, not to answer them straight. It was by way of describing the event simply, that he informed her that he would just have had time to pull the creature out, but not enough to pull himself back afterwards. Ferguson was used to calculating things in millionths of an inch; she was n't. I dare say the single second that had given Ferguson time to turn round in his mind, she conceived of as a minute, at least. It would have taken her a week to turn round in her own mind, no doubt a month, a year, perhaps. How do I know? But she got the essential fact: that Ferguson had made a choice. Then she rounded on him. It would have killed her to lose him, but she would rather have lost him than to see him standing before her, etc., etc. Ferguson quoted a lot of her talk straight to me, and I can remember it; but you need n't ask me to soil my mouth with it. "And half an hour before, she had been saying with a good deal of heat that that little runt ought never to have been born, and that if we had decent laws it never would have

been allowed to live." Ferguson said that to me, with a kind of bewilderment. You see, he had made the mistake of taking that little fool seriously. Well, he loved her. You can't go below that: that's rock-bottom. Ferguson could n't dig any deeper down for his way out. There was no deeper down.

'Apparently Ferguson still thought he could argue it out with her. She so believed in eugenics, you see a very radical, compared with Ferguson. It was she who had had no doubt about towhead. And the love-part of it seemed to him fixed: it did n't occur to him that that was debatable. So he stuck to something that could be discussed. Then and this was his moment of exceeding folly - he caught at the old episode of the Argentina. That had nothing to do with her present state of shock. She had seen towhead; but she had n't seen the sprinkled Mediterranean. And she had accepted that. At least, she had spoken of his survival as though it had been one of the few times when God had done precisely the right thing. So he took that to explain with. The fool! The reasonable fool!

"Then oh, then she went wild. (Yet she must have known there were a thousand chances on the Argentina for him to throw his life away, and precious few to save it.) She backed up against a tree and stretched her arms out like this'-Havelock made a clumsy stage-gesture of aversion from Chantry, the villain. 'And for an instant he thought she was afraid of a Jersey cow that had come up to take part in the discussion. So he threw a twig at its nose.'

IV

Chantry's wonder grew, swelled, and burst.

'Do you mean to say that that safety-deposit vault of a Ferguson told you all this?'

'As I am telling it to you. Only much more detail, of course- and much, much faster. It was n't like a story at all: it was like like a hemorrhage. I did n't interrupt him as you've been interrupting me. Well, the upshot of it was that she spurned him quite in the grand manner. She found the opposites of all the nice things she had been saying for six months, and said them. And Ferguson-your cocky Ferguson - stood and listened, until she had talked herself out, and then went away. He never saw her again; and when he sent for me, he had made up his mind that she never intended to take any of it back. So he stepped out, I tell you.' 'As hard hit as that,' Chantry mused. 'Just as hard hit as that. Ferguson had had no previous affairs; she was very literally the one woman; and he managed, at forty, to combine the illusions of the boy of twenty and the man of sixty.'

'But if he thought he was so precious to the world, was n't it more than ever his duty to preserve his existence? He could see other people die in his place, but he could n't see himself bucking up against a broken heart. Isn't that what the strong man does? Lives out his life when he does n't at all like the look of it? Say what you like, he was a coward, Havelock at the last, anyhow.'

'I won't ask for your opinion just yet, thank you. Perhaps if Ferguson had been sure he would ever do good work again, he would n't have taken himself off. That might have held him. He might have stuck by on the chance. But I doubt it. Don't you see? He loved the girl too much.'

"Thought he could n't live without her,' snorted Chantry. 'Oh, no - not that. But if she was right, he was the meanest skunk alive. He owed the world at least two deaths, so to speak. The only approach you

'You think' - Chantry leaned forward, very eager at last - 'that he decided she was right? That I'm right — that we're all of us right?'

Havelock the Dane bowed his head in his huge hands. 'No. If you ask me, I think he kept his own opinion untarnished to the end. When I told him I thought he was right, he just nodded, as if one took that for granted. But it did n't matter to him. I am pretty sure that he cared only what she thought.'

'If he did n't agree with her? And if she had treated him like a criminal? He must have despised her, in that case.'

'He never said one word of her —bar

quoting some of her words that was n't utterly gentle. You could see that he loved her with his whole soul. And -it's my belief- he gave her the benefit of the doubt. In killing himself, he acted on the hypothesis that she had been right. It was the one thing he could do for her.'

'But if no one except you thinks it was suicide- and you can't prove it-'

'Oh, he had to take that chance the chance of her never knowing-or else create a scandal. And that would have been very hard on her and on his family. But there were straws she could easily clutch at-as I have clutched at them. The perfect order in which everything happened to be left - even the last notes he had made. His laboratory was a scientist's paradise, they tell me. And the will, made after she threw him over, leaving everything to her. Not a letter unanswered, all little bills paid, and little debts liquidated. He came as near suggesting it as he could, in decency. But I dare say she will never guess it.'

"Then what did it profit him?' 'It did n't profit him, in your sense. He took a very long chance on her guessing. That wasn't what concerned him.' 'I hope she will never guess, anyhow. It would ruin her life, to no good end.' 'Oh, no.' Havelock was firm. 'I doubt if she would take it that way. If she grasped it at all, she'd believe he thought her right. And if he thought her right, of course he would n't want to live, would he? She would never think he killed himself simply for love of her.'

'Ah, she'd scarcely refine on it as you are doing, Havelock. You're amazing.' 'Well, he certainly never expected her to know that he did it himself. If he had been the sort of weakling that dies because he can't have a particular woman, he'd have been also the sort of weakling that leaves a letter explaining.'

'What then did he die for? You'll have to explain to me. Not because he could n't have her; not because he felt guilty. Why, then? You have n't left him a motive.'

'Oh, have n't I? The most beautiful motive in the whole world, my dear fellow. A motive that puts all your little simple motives in the shade.'

be right. And he took her for what she was, and loved her as she was. His love

don't you see? was too big. He could n't revolt from her: she had the whole of him—except, perhaps, his excellent judgment. He could n't drag about a life which she felt that way about. He destroyed it, as he would. have destroyed anything she found loathsome. He was merely justifying himself to his love. He could n't hope she would know. Nor, I believe, could he have lied to her. That is, he could n't have admitted in words that she was right, when he felt her so absolutely wrong; but he could make that magnificent silent act of faith.'

Chantry still held out. 'I don't believe he did it. I hold with the coroner.'

'I don't. He came as near telling me as he could without making me an accessory before the fact. There were none of the loose ends that the most orderly man would leave if he died suddenly. Take my word for it, old man.'

A long look passed between them. Each seemed to be trying to find out with his eyes something that words had not helped him to.

Finally Chantry protested once more. 'But Ferguson could n't love like that.'

Havelock the Dane laid one hand on the arm of Chantry's chair and spoke sternly. 'He not only could, but did. And there I am a better authority than you. Think what you please, but I will not have that fact challenged. Perhaps you could count up on your fingers the women who are loved like that; but, anyhow, she was. My second cousin once removed, damn her!' He ended with a vicious twang.

'And now' - Havelock rose like your opinion.'

'About what?'

- 'I'd

'Well, can't you see the beautiful sanity of Ferguson?'

'No, I can't,' snapped Chantry. 'I think he was wrong, both in the begin

ning and in the end. But I will admit he was not a coward. I respect him, but I do not think, at any point, he was right - except perhaps in "doing" the coroner.'

"That settles it, then,' said Havelock. And he started towards the door.

'Settles what, in heaven's name?' 'What I came to have settled. I shan't tell her. If I could have got one other decent citizen- and I confess you were my only chance to agree with me that Ferguson was right,right about his fellow passengers on the Argentina, right about towhead on the track, I'd have gone to her, I think. I'd rather like to ruin her life, if I could.'

A great conviction approached Chantry just then. He felt the rush of it through his brain.

'No,' he cried. 'Ferguson loved her too much. He would n't like that not as you'd put it to her.'

Havelock thought a moment. 'No,' he said in turn; but his 'no' was very humble. 'He would n't. I shall never do it. But, my God, how I wanted to!' 'And I'll tell you another thing, too.' Chantry's tone was curious. "You may agree with Ferguson all you like; you may admire him as much as you say; but you, Havelock, would never have done what he did. Not even' - he lifted a hand against interruption — ‘if you knew you had the brain you think Ferguson had. You'd have been at the bottom of the sea, or under the engine-wheels, and you know it.'

He folded his arms with a hint of truculence.

But Havelock the Dane, to Chantry's surprise, was meek. 'Yes,' he said, 'I know it. Now let me out of here.'

'Well, then,'-Chantry's voice rang out triumphant, - 'what does that prove?'

'Prove?' Havelock's great fist crashed down on the table. 'It proves that Ferguson's a better man than either of us. I can think straight, but he had the sand to act straight. You haven't even the sand to think straight. You and your reactionary rot! The world's moving, Chantry. Ferguson was ahead of it, beckoning. You're an ant that got caught in the machinery, I should n't wonder.'

'Oh, stow the rhetoric! We simply don't agree. It's happened before.' Chantry laughed scornfully. 'I tell you I respect him; but God Almighty would n't make me agree with him.'

'You're too mediæval by half,' Havelock mused. 'Now, Ferguson was a knight of the future - a knight of Humanity.'

'Don't!' shouted Chantry. His nerves were beginning to feel the strain. 'Leave chivalry out of it. The Argentina business may or may not have been wisdom, but it certainly was n't cricket.'

'No,' said Havelock. 'Chess, rather. The game where chance has n't a show

the game of the intelligent future. That very irregular and disconcerting move of his. And he got taken, you might say. She's an irresponsible beast, your queen.'

'Drop it, will you!' Then Chantry pulled himself together, a little ashamed. 'It's fearfully late. Better stop and dine.'

'No, thanks.' The big man opened the door of the room and rested a foot on the threshold. 'I feel like dining with some one who appreciates Ferguson.'

'I don't know where you'll find him.' Chantry smiled and shook hands. 'Oh, I carry him about with me. Good-night,' said Havelock the Dane.

I

NOTHING at this moment furnishes so much food for speculation as the new alignment of the powers likely to follow in the wake of Armageddon. Italy has dropped out of the Dreibund. From Berlin come whispers of a separate peace with Russia. In Petrograd mutterings have been heard of Russia's dissatisfaction with the way England has been treating her. In England the voice of disapproval of Japan's aggressive policy in China has been growing louder. Is this an indieation of Downing Street's desire to break with Tokio when the treaty of alliance terminates in 1921?

In the Far East equally momentous developments are taking place. Japan has already entered into a new convention with Russia which may easily develop into an alliance. Will she couple the compact with an entente with Germany? Not a few Japanese writers and publicists have come forward with tributes to German efficiency and valor, while many Germans, on their side, have been urging the wisdom of making up with the Japanese. The German officers and men who capitulated to the Japanese at Tsingtau have been accorded the most courteous treatment ever since their arrival in Japan. As if to add significance to the incident, a section of the Japanese press began, soon after the fall of Tsingtau, to voice sentiments by no means flattering to England. Will Japan prove after the war so rash as to cut asunder the ties of al

liance which have united her to England during the past twelve years?

To forecast the future of the AngloJapanese alliance it is essential to know something of its past. The first alliance, concluded on January 30, 1902, was of far greater significance than was realized by its authors. On the face of it, the treaty afforded Japan no tangible benefit. It partook rather of the nature of a shadowy assurance against attack. It simply prescribed that if either high contracting party should become involved in war with a third power, the other high contracting party should maintain a strict neutrality, and exercise its influence to prevent other powers from joining in hostilities against its ally. It was only in the event of a third power or powers joining in hostilities against either high contracting party that the other was required to come to its assistance. Now, the only power expected at the time to encroach upon Japan's rights was Russia. Since there was but little probability of any third power joining Russia in the event of a Russo-Japanese war, it was not thought likely that England would be called upon to render military assistance to Japan. Thus the risk run by Great Britain was very small.

The statesmanship of Lord Salisbury and Lord Lansdowne foresaw all this and more. A victorious Japan, in the fast-approaching war with Russia, meant the checkmating of the Russian advance in the Far East-that nightmare of British statesmen. Even if