But he did not trouble to marshal the reasons in favour of his joining the Army.  He had only one reason:  he must!  He quite ignored the larger aspects of the war—­the future of civilization, freedom versus slavery, right versus wrong, even the responsibilities of citizenship and the implications of patriotism.  His decision was the product, not of argument, but of feeling.  However, he did not feel a bit virtuous.  He had to join the Army, and ‘that was all there was to it.’  A beastly nuisance, this world-war!  It was interfering with his private affairs; it might put an end to his private affairs altogether; he hated soldiering; he looked inimically at the military caste.  An unspeakable nuisance.  But there the war was, and he was going to answer to his name.  He simply could not tolerate the dreadful silence and stillness on the plain after his name had been called.  “Pooh!  Sheer sentimentality!” he said to himself, thinking of the vision—­half-dream, half-fancy.  “Rotten sentimentality!”

He asked: 

“Damn it!  Am I an Englishman or am I not?”

Like most Englishmen, he was much more an Englishman than he ever suspected.

“What on earth are you doing, George?”

At the voice of his wife he gave a nervous jump, and then instantly controlled himself and looked round.  Her voice was soft, liquid, weak with slumber.  But, lying calmly on one side, her head half buried in the pillow, and the bedclothes pushed back from her shoulders, she was wideawake and gazed at him steadily.

“I’m just writing a letter,” he answered gruffly.

“Now?  What letter?”

“Here!  You shall read it.”  He walked straight across the room in his gay pyjamas only partly hidden by the splendid dressing-gown, and handed her the letter.  Moving nothing but her hand, she took the letter and held it in front of her eyes.  He sat down between the beds, on the edge of his own bed, facing her.

“Whatever is it?”

“Read it.  You’ve got it,” he said, with impatience.  He was trembling, aware that the crisis had suddenly leapt at him.

“Oh!”

She had read the opening phrase; she had received the first shock.  But the tone of her exclamation gave no clue at all to her attitude.  It might mean anything—­anything.  She shut her eyes; then glanced at him, terror-struck, appealing, wistful, implacable.

“Not at once?”

“Yes, at once.”

“But surely you’ll at least wait until after October.”

He shook his head.

“But why can’t you?”

“I can’t.”

“But there’s no object—­”

“I’ve got to do it.”

“You’re horribly cruel.”

“Well, that’s me!” He was sullen, and as hard as a diamond.

“George, I shall never be able to stand it.  It’s too much to expect.  It’ll kill me.”

“Not it!  What’s the use of talking like that?  If I’d been in the Territorials before the war, like lots of chaps, I should have been gone long ago, and you’d have stood it all right.  Don’t you understand we’re at war?  Do you imagine the war can wait for things like babies?”