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such feminine weakness. "Benny's a man, and must act as a man. That boy, Campton, saw things as they were from the first."

Campton took leave, dazed and crushed by the conversation. It was all one to him if Harvey Mayhew chose to call on America to avenge his wrongs; Campton himself was beginning to wish that his country would wake up to what was going on in the world; but that he, Campton, should be drawn into the affair, should have to write letters, accompany the ex-Delegate to Embassies and Red Crosses, languish with him in ministerial antechambers, and be deafened with appeals to his own celebrity and efficiency; that he should have ascribed to himself that mysterious gift of "knowing the ropes" in which his whole blundering career had proved him to be cruelly lacking: this was so dreadful to him as to obscure every other question.

"Thank the Lord," he muttered, "I haven't got the telephone anyhow!"

He glanced cautiously down the wide stairs of the hotel to assure himself of a safe retreat; but in the hall an appealing voice detained him.

"Dear Master! Dear great Master! I've been lying in wait for you!"

A Red Cross nurse advanced: not the majestic figure of the Crimean legend, but the new version evolved in the rue de la Paix: short skirts, long ankles, pearls and curls. The face under the coif was young, wistful,