“I shall be a nurse,” Mrs. Paston Benedek decided.  “I am sick of bridge and amusing myself.”

“The costume is quite becoming,” Mrs. Barlow murmured, glancing at herself in the looking-glass, “and I adore those poor dear soldiers.”

“Well, I’ll leave you to it,” Norgate declared.  “Good luck to you all!”

They crowded around him, shaking him by the hand, still besieging him with questions about Selingman.  He shook his head good-humouredly and made his way towards the door.

“There’s nothing more to tell you,” he concluded.  “Selingman is just one of the most dangerous spies who has ever worked in this country, but the war itself was inevitable.  We’ve known that for years, only we wouldn’t believe it.  We’ll all meet again, perhaps, in the work later on.”

Late that night, Norgate stood hand in hand with Anna at the window of their little sitting-room.  Down in the Strand, the newsboys were shouting the ominous words.  The whole of London was stunned.  The great war had come!

“It’s wonderful, dear,” Anna whispered, “that we should have had these few days of so great happiness.  I feel brave and strong now for our task.”

Norgate held her closely to him.

“We’ve been in luck,” he said simply.  “We were able to do something pretty soon.  I have had the greatest happiness in life a man can have.  Now I am going to offer my life to my country and pray that it may be spared for you.  But above all, whatever happens,” he added, leaning a little further from the window towards where the curving lights gleamed across the black waters of the Thames, “above all, whatever may happen to us, we are face to face with one splendid thing—­a great country to fight for, and a just cause.  I saw Hebblethwaite as I came in.  He is a changed man.  Talks about raising an immense citizen army in six months.  Both his boys have taken up commissions.  Hebblethwaite himself is going around the country, recruiting.  They are his people, after all.  He has given them their prosperity at the expense, alas! of our safety.  It’s up to them now to prove whether the old spirit is there or not.  We shall need two million men.  Hebblethwaite believes we shall get them long before the camps are ready to receive them.  If we do, it will be his justification.”

“And if we don’t?” Anna murmured.

Norgate threw his head a little further back.

“Most pictures,” he said, “have two sides, but we need only look at one.  I am going to believe that we shall get them.  I am going to remember the only true thing that fellow Selingman ever said:  that our lesson had come before it is too late.  I am going to believe that the heart and conscience of the nation is still a live thing.  If it is, dear, the end is certain.  And I am going to believe that it is!”