“I knew you would!” she murmured, and then snatched him to her, and kissed him, and kept her mouth on his.

“You didn’t,” he said, as soon as she loosed him.  “I didn’t know myself.”

But he privately admitted that perhaps she did know.  She had every fault, but she was intelligent.  Constantly he was faced with that fact.  She did not understand the significance of the war; she lacked imagination; but her understanding was sometimes terrible.  She was devious; but she had a religion.  He was her religion.  She would cast the god underfoot—­and then in a passion of repentance restore it ardently to the sacred niche.

She said: 

“I couldn’t have borne it if Everard had gone and you hadn’t.  But of course you meant to go all the time.”

That was how she saved his amour-propre.

“I always knew you were a genius—­”

“Oh!  Chuck it, kid!”

“But you’re more, somehow.  This business—­”

“You don’t mean joining the Army?”

“Yes.”

“What rot!  There’s nothing in it.  Fellows are doing it everywhere.”

She smiled superiorly, and then inquired: 

“How do you join?  What are you going to do?  Shall you ask Everard?”

“Well—­” he hesitated.  He had no desire to consult Lucas.

“Why don’t you see Colonel Rannion?” she Suggested.

“Jove!  That’s a scheme.  Never thought of him!”

Her satisfaction at the answer was childlike, and he was filled with delight that it should be so.  They launched themselves into an interminable discussion about every possible arrangement of everything.  But in a pause of it he destroyed its tremendous importance by remarking casually: 

“No hurry, of course.  I bet you I shall be kept knocking about here for months.”

CHAPTER III

IN THE MACHINE

I

Colonel Rannion was brother of the wife of the man for whom George had built the house at Hampstead.  George had met him several times at the dinners and other reunions to which a sympathetic architect is often invited in the dwelling that he has created.  Colonel Rannion had greatly liked his sister’s house, had accordingly shown much esteem for George, and had even spoken of ordering a house for himself.

Just as breakfast was being served, George had the idea of ringing up the Hampstead people for the Colonel’s address, which he obtained at once.  The Colonel was staying at the Berkeley Hotel.  The next moment he got the Berkeley, and the Colonel in person.  The Colonel remembered him instantly.  George said he wanted to see him.  What about?  Well, a commission.  The Colonel said he had to leave the hotel in twenty-five minutes.  “I can be with you in less than a quarter of an hour,” said George—­or rather, not George, but some subconscious instinct within him, acting independently