is pleasant to contemplate "one entire and perfect chrysolite" of
happiness, and that, during these bright years of opening manhood,
was the rare and fragile possession of Philip Vaughan and Arthur
Grey.

* * * * *

John Bright was once walking with one of his sons, then a schoolboy,
past the Guards' Memorial in Waterloo Place. The boy asked the
meaning of the single word inscribed on the base, CRIMEA. Bright's
answer was as emphatic as the inscription: "A crime." There is no
need to recapitulate in this place the series of blunders through
which this country, in Lord Clarendon's phrase, "drifted towards
war." Month by month things shaped themselves in a way which left
no reasonable doubt about the issue. The two friends said little.
Deep in the heart of each there lay the conviction that an event
was at hand which would "pierce even to the dividing asunder of
soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow." But each held the
conviction with a difference. To Grey it meant the approach of that
to which, from the days of his chivalrous boyhood, he had looked
forward, as the supreme good of life--the chance of a soldier's glory
and a soldier's death. To Vaughan it meant simply the extinction
of all that made life worth living. Each foresaw an agony, but
the one foresaw it with a joy which no affection could subdue;
the other with a despair which even religion seemed powerless to
relieve. Before long silence became impossible. The decision of the
Cabinet was made known. Two strong and ardent natures, which since
boyhood had lived in and on one another, were forced to admit that a
separation, which might be eternal, "was nigh, even at the doors."
But there was this vital difference between the two cases--the