“He loses her who gains her,
Who watches, day by day,
The dust of time...”
The words were blurred as the unseen boat passed behind some unseen cape; then the music died on the breeze. Jeremy bent over the railing, where Marcia’s hand had rested.
Half a world away an obscure fanatic, unknown to the world and to-day almost forgotten by it, was gloomily, lonelily, dreamily blending those common, inexpensive, terrific chemicals whereby he was to plunge civilization in carnage. The happy boats passed on. The happy voices blended again and were silenced. The busy presses chronicled the events of unsuspecting nations to little folk of souls yet untouched who, sleeping, “rose up to buy and sell again.” Then the bomb of the dreamy fanatic was flung, and in the force of that explosion, the wave of war, which had hung crested and suspended, broke and whelmed the world in such flood that the quicksands upon its edges spread even to far-away Fenchester.