Marthe left the room, seeming resentful.

“What has passed?” Christine murmured, without smiling.

“A faint in the taxi, my poor child.  That was all,” said G.J. calmly.

“But how is it that I find myself here?”

“I carried thee upstairs in my arms.”

“Thou?”

“Why not?” He spoke lightly, with careful negligence.  “It appears that thou wast in the Strand.”

“Was I?  I lost thee.  Something tore thee from me.  I ran.  I ran till I could not run.  I was sure that never more should I see thee alive.  Oh!  My Gilbert, what terrible moments!  What a catastrophe!  Never shall I forget those moments!”

G.J. said, with bland supremacy: 

“But it is necessary that thou shouldst forget them.  Master thyself.  Thou knowst now what it is—­an air-raid.  It was an ordinary air-raid.  There have been many like it.  There will be many more.  For once we were in the middle of a raid—­by chance.  But we are safe—­that is enough.”

“But the deaths?”

He shook his head.

“But there must have been many deaths!”

“I do not know.  There will have been deaths.  There usually are.”  He shrugged his shoulders.

Christine sat up and gave a little screech.

“Ah!” She burst out, her features suddenly transformed by enraged protest.  “Why wilt thou act thy cold man?”

He was amazed at the sudden nervous strength she showed.

“But, my little one—­”

She cried: 

“Why wilt thou act thy cold man?  I shall become mad in this sacred England.  I shall become totally mad.  You are all the same, all, all, men and women.  You are marvels—­let it be so!—­but you are not human.  Do you then wish to be taken for telegraph-poles?  Always you are pretending something.  Pretending that you have no sentiments.  And you are soaked in sentimentality.  But no!  You will not show it!  You will not applaud your soldiers in the streets.  You will not salute your flag.  You will not salute even a corpse.  You have only one phrase:  ’It is nothing’.  If you win a battle, ‘It is nothing’ If you lose one, ’It is nothing’.  If you are nearly killed in an air-raid, ‘It is nothing’.  And if you were killed outright and could yet speak, you would say, with your eternal sneer, ‘It is nothing’.  You other men, you make love with the air of turning on a tap.  As for your women, god knows—!  But I have a horror of Englishwomen.  Prudes but wantons.  Can I not guess?  Always hypocrites.  Always holding themselves in.  My god, that pinched smile!  And your women of the world especially.  Have they a natural gesture?  Yet does not everyone know that they are rotten with vice and perversity?  And your actresses!...  And they talk of us!  Ah, well!  For me, I can say that I earn my living honestly, every son of it.  For all that I receive, I give.  And they would throw me on to the pavement to starve, me whose function in society—­”