legs on my plate at the Cosmic Club, and did not listen to my cousin,
the Colonel, talking military tactics.

The mental review took an eighth of the time it has taken me to tell it.
But as I shook off my dream of the woods, I realized that, while
Thornton still talked, he had got out of his uninteresting rut into his
interesting one. Without hearing what he said I knew that from the look
of the men's faces. Each man's eyes were bright, through a manner of
mistiness, and there was a sudden silence which was perhaps what had
recalled me.

"It's a war which is making a new standard of courage," spoke the young
Governor in the gentle tone which goes so oddly and so pleasantly with
his bull-dog jaw. "It looks as if we were going to be left with a world
where heroism is the normal thing," spoke the Governor.

"Heroism--yes," said Bobby, and I knew with satisfaction that he was off
on his own line, the line he does not fancy, the line where few can
distance him. "Heroism!" repeated Bobby, "It's all around out there. And
it crops out--" he begun to smile--"in unsuspected places, from varied
impulses."

He was working his way to an anecdote. The men at the table, their
chairs twisted towards him, sat very still.

"What I mean to say is," Bobby began, "that this war, horrible as it is,
is making over human, nature for the better. It's burning out
selfishness and cowardice and a lot of faults from millions of men, and
it's holding up the nobility of what some of them do to the entire
world. It takes a character, this débâcle, and smashes out the