W. E. Henley.

Dick went out into the still night air from the close atmosphere of Joan's room, his mind a seething battleground of emotions—anger, and hurt pride, and a still small sense of pain, which as time passed grew so greatly in proportion that it exceeded both the other sensations. He had said very bitterly to Joan that she had broken his dream, but, because it had been broken, it none the less had the power to hurt intolerably. Each fragment throbbed with a hot sense of injustice and self-pity. He had not the slightest idea what to do with himself: every prospect seemed equally distasteful. He walked, to begin with, furiously and rather aimlessly down in the direction of the Embankment. The exercise, such as it was, dulled his senses and quieted a little the tumult of his mind. He found himself thinking of other things. The men to-day in his Club had been discussing the possibility of war, they had been planning what they would do; instinctively, since the thought of Joan and the scene he had just left were too tender for much probing, his mind turned to that. As he stamped along he resolved, without thinking very deeply about it, that he would volunteer for active service, and speculated on the possibility of his getting taken on at once.

"Doctors will be very needful in this war," one man had said at the Club.

"Yes, by Gad," another had answered. "We have got some devilish contrivances these days for killing our brother men."

Looked at from that point of view, the idea seemed strange, and Dick caught his breath on the thought. What would war mean? Hundreds of men would be killed—hundreds, why it would be more like thousands. He had read descriptions of the South African war, he had talked with men who had been all through it.

"We doctors see the awful side of war, I can tell you," an old doctor had once told him. "To the others it may seem flags flying, drums beating, and a fine uplifting spectacle; but we see the horrors, the shattered bodies, the eyes that pray for death. It's a ghastly affair."

And yet there was something in the thought which flamed at Dick's heart and made him throw his head up. It was the beating of drums, the call of the bugles that he heard as he thought of it; the blood tingled in his veins, he forgot that other pain which had driven him forth so restless a short hour ago.

The great dark waters of the river had some special message to give him this evening. He stood for a little watching them; lights flamed along the Embankment, the bridges lay across the intervening darkness like coloured lanterns fastened on a string. Over on the other side he could see the trees of Battersea Park, and beyond that again the huddled pile of houses and wharfs and warehouses that crowded down to the water's edge. He was suddenly aware, as he stood there, of a passionate love for this old, grey city, this slow-moving mass of dark waters. It symbolized something which the thought of war had stirred awake in his heart. He had a hot sense of love and pride and pity all mingled, he felt somehow as if the city were his, and as if an enemy's hand had been stretched out to spoil it. The drumming, the flag-waving, and the noise of bugles were still astir in his imagination, but the river had called something else to life behind their glamour. It did not occur to him to call it love of country, yet that was what it was.

His walk brought him out in the end by the Houses of Parliament, and he found himself in the midst of a large crowd. It swayed and surged now this way and now that, as is the way of crowds. The outskirts of it reached right up to and around Trafalgar Square. When Dick had fought his way up Parliament Street he could see a mass of people moving about the National Gallery, and right above them Nelson's statue stood out black against the sky.

"If they want war, these bally Germans," someone in the crowd suddenly shouted in a very hoarse and beery voice, "let's give it them."

"Yes, by God!" another answered. "Good old England, let's stand by our word."

"We have got men behind the guns," declaimed a third.

But such words were only as the foam thrown up by a great sea; the multitude did no real shouting, the spirit that moved them was too earnest for that. There were women among the crowd, their eager, excited faces caught Dick's attention. Some were crying hysterically, but most of them faced the matter in the same way that their menkind did. Dick could find no words to describe the curious feeling which gripped him, but he knew himself one of this vast multitude, all thinking the same thoughts, all answering to the same heart-beats. It was as if the meaning of the word citizen had suddenly been made clear to his heart.

He moved with the shifting of the crowd as far as Trafalgar Square, and here some of the intense seriousness of the strain was broken, for round and about the stately lions of Nelson's statue a noisy battle was raging. Several Peace parties, decked with banners inscribed "No War" and "Let us have peace," were coming in for a very rough five minutes at the hands of the crowd. Rather to his own surprise Dick found himself partaking in the battle, with a sense of jubilant pride in his prowess to hit out. He had a German as his opponent, which was a stroke of luck in itself, but in a calmer moment which followed on the arrival of the police, he thought to himself that even that was hardly an excuse for hitting a man who was desirous of keeping the world's peace. Still the incident had exhilarated him, he was more than ever a part of the crowd, and he went with them as far as Buckingham Palace. Some impulse to see the King had come upon the people; they gathered in the square in front of the Palace, and waited in confident patience for him to appear.

Dick was standing at the far end of the Square, pressed up against the railings. In front of him stood two women, they were evidently strangers to each other, yet their excitement had made them friends, and they stood holding hands. One was a tall, eager-faced girl; Dick could not see the other woman's face, but from her voice he imagined her to be a good deal older and rather superior in class to the girl. It was the younger one's spirit, however, that was infectious.

"Isn't it fine?" she was saying. "Aren't you proud to be English? I feel as if my heart was going to jump out of my mouth. They are our men," she went on breathlessly; "it is a most wonderful thought, and of course they will win through, but a lot of them will die first. Oh, I do hate the Germans!" Her whole face flushed with passionate resentment.

"One need not hate a nation because one goes to war with it," the other woman answered. Dick thought her voice sounded very tired.

"Yes, one need," the girl flamed. "We women can't fight, but we can hate. Perhaps we shouldn't hate so much if we could fight," she added as a concession.

"I am married to a German," Dick heard the other woman say bitterly. "I can't hate him."

He saw the girl's quick face of horror and the way she stood away from her companion, but just at that moment some impulse surged the crowd forward and he lost sight of them. Yet the memory of the woman's voice and the words she had said haunted him. War would mean that, then, the tearing apart of families, the wrecking of home life.

"The King, the King!" the crowd yelled and shouted in a million voices. "God save the King."

Dick looked up to the Palace windows; a slight, small figure had come out on to one of the balconies and stood looking down on the faces of the people. Cheer upon cheer rose to greet him, the multitude rocked and swayed with their acclamation, then above the general noise came the sound of measured music, not a band, but just the people singing in unison:

"God save our gracious King,
Long live our noble King,
God save the King."

The notes rose and swelled and filled the air, the cry of a nation's heart, the loyalty of a people towards their King.

The sheer emotion of it shook Dick out of the sense of revelry which had come upon him during his fight. He pushed his way through the crowd, and climbed over the railings into the darkness of St. James's Park. It was officially closed for the night, but Dick had no doubt that a small bribe at the other side would let him out. The Queen and the little Princes had joined the King on the balcony. Looking back he could see them very faintly, the Prince was standing to the salute, the Queen was waving her handkerchief.

His Club was crowded with men, all equally excited, all talking very fast. Someone had just come back from the House. War was a dead certainty now, mobilization had been ordered, the Fleet was ready.

"Our Army is the problem, there will have to be conscription," was the general vote.

Dick stayed and talked with the rest of them till long after twelve. Morning should see him offering his services to the War Office; if they would not have him as a doctor he could always enlist. One thing was certain, he must by hook or by crook be amongst the first to go.

"We will have to send an Expeditionary Force right now," the general opinion had been, "if we are to do any good."

Dick thought vaguely of what it would all mean: the excitement, the thrill, an army on the march, camp life, military discipline, and his share of work in hospital. "Roll up your sleeves and get at them," his South African friend had described it to him. "I can tell you, you don't have much time to think when they are bringing in the wounded by the hundred."

Not till just as he was turning into bed did he think again of Joan. Such is the place which love takes in a man's thoughts when war is in the balance. The knowledge of her deceit and his broken dream hurt him less in proportion, for the time he had forgotten it. He had been brutal to her, he realized; he had left her crouched up on the floor crying her heart out. Why had she cried?—she had achieved her purpose, for she could only have had one reason in asking the other man to meet him. He could only suppose that he had frightened her by his evident bad temper, and for that he was sorry. He was not angry with her any longer. She had looked very beautiful in her clinging black dress, with the red rose pinned in at her throat. And even the rose had been a gift from the other man. Well, it was all ended; for two years he had dreamed about love, for one hour he had known its bitterness. He would shut it absolutely outside of his life now, he would never, he need never, thanks to the new interests which were crowding in, think of Joan again.

He opened his window before getting into bed and leaned out. The streets were deserted and quiet, the people had shouted themselves hoarse and gone home. Under the nearest lamp-post a policeman stood, a solid, magnificent figure of law and order, and overhead in a very dark sky countless little stars shone and twinkled. On the verge of war! What would the next still slumbering months bring to the world, and could he forget Joan? Is not love rather a thing which nothing can kill, which no grave can cover, no time ignore?