'Edge,' said Selwyn, speaking for the first time, 'you can't imagine what your welcome means to me.'
'My dear boy, you never doubted its warmth?'
'Yes I did, old man—after what I've been writing.'
The athletic clergyman laughed uproariously. 'I suppose you're a dyed-in-the-wool Englishman now, and want your cup of tea. Well, I'll join you.—Mrs. Perkins.' Going to the door, he gave the necessary orders, and returned rubbing his hands, and venting his surplus energy in a variety of hearty noises expressive of pleasure at seeing his old friend.
'Now, start at the beginning,' he said, 'and give me everything. The semaphore's up, and there's a clear track ahead.'
'But I want to know about things here first.'
'After you, my son. Put it over now. By the way, that's a nasty scar on your head. How did you get it?'
In a few words Selwyn traced the course of events which had led to his crusade against Ignorance, a crusade which had in an inexplicable way turned particularly against England. He spoke of Doug Watson's letter with its description of the slaughtered German boy, and he told of the air-raid in the moonlight, the climax to his long orgy of idealism. He touched lightly and humorously on his hospital experience, but not once did he mention the inner secret of his heart. To the whole recital Forbes listened with a genuineness and a bigness of sympathy which seemed to belong to his body as well as his mind.
'That is pretty well everything,' said Selwyn. 'I have come back here, humble and perplexed, to try to get my bearings. There have been two men financing my stuff, and they must account to me for the uses to which they have put it. Edge, I was sincere. Not one word was written but I put my very life-blood into it.'
The arrival of tea put a temporary stop to the author's self-revelation, and his host busied himself with his hospitable duties.