Being too wide awake to return to bed, I seated myself in a chair and took up a book on the Eastern Question which I had been reading during the day, and in which I was greatly interested. The fact that I did not entertain the same views with regard to the Russo-Chinese-Japanese _entente_ as the author only added to my enjoyment of the work. I remembered that when I had taken it up in the morning I had found it difficult to lay it aside again; now, however, though I glued my eyes to the pages by sheer will pressure, I was scarcely conscious of the printed words before me. As I read, or rather tried to read, it appeared to me that somebody was standing in the room, a few paces from my chair, intently regarding me. More than once I involuntarily looked up, only to find, as it is needless to state, that there was no one there. At last I put down the book in despair, went to the window and, leaning my arms upon the sill, looked out. Sleeping Paris lay before and around me, scarcely a sound was to be heard; once the roll of distant carriage-wheels, from the Rue de Rivoli, came up to me, then the irregular striking of the clocks in the neighbourhood announcing the hour of three.
As I stood at the window, I thought of the crisis which England was approaching. Many years had elapsed since she had been involved in a great war. In these days epoch succeeds epoch with incredible rapidity, and public opinion has the knack of changing with each one. The stolidity, the self-reserve, the faculty of being able to take the hard knocks and yet continue the fight, that had characterised us at the time of Waterloo and the Crimea, did that still exist? Then again, were we as fully prepared as we might be? Were our Generals as competent as of yore, or had the long spell of peace wrought a change in them also? They were weighty questions, and a man might very well have been pardoned had he asked them of himself with an anxious heart. Our "splendid isolation" had been the jeer and taunt of the world. Would that very isolation prove our downfall, if by any evil chance matters took a wrong turn with us? For a moment I could see England as she would be were her armies to be defeated in the present struggle. The croaking prophecies of her enemies would have proved too true, and she would be at the mercy of the yelping mob that had once only dared to bark and snap at her from a distance. "O God! grant that such a thing may never come to pass," I muttered, and, as the prayer escaped my lips, there shaped themselves in the darkness in front of me, the eyes that had haunted me all the afternoon and evening. As I gazed into their soulless depths, a sensation of icy coldness passed over me.