The World Peril of 1910 by George Griffith

After dinner Lennard excused himself, saying that he wanted to make a few more calculations; and then he got outside and lit his pipe, and walked up the winding path towards the observatory.

"What am I to do? " he said between his teeth. "It's a ghastly position for a man to be placed in. Fancy -- just a poor, ordinary, human being like myself having the power of losing or saving the world in his hands! And then, of course, there's a woman in the question -- the Eternal Feminine -- even in such a colossal problem as this!