He had actually made for himself an after-dinner peace in which coffee could be drunk and cigarettes smoked as if nothing were happening to Europe.

“England,” he said, “will not be drawn in, because her ultimatum will stop the War.  There won’t be any Armageddon.”

“Oh, won’t there!” said Michael.  “And I can tell you there won’t be much left of us after it’s over.”

He had been in Germany and he knew.  He carried himself with a sort of stern haughtiness, as one who knew better than any of them.  And yet his words conveyed no picture to his brain, no definite image of anything at all.

But in Nicholas’s brain images gathered fast, one after another; they thickened; clear, vivid images with hard outlines.  They came slowly but with order and precision.  While the others talked he had been silent and very grave.

“Some of us’ll be left,” he said.  “But it’ll take us all our time.”

Anthony looked thoughtfully at Nicholas.  A sudden wave of realization beat up against his consciousness and receded.

“Well,” he said, “we shall know at midnight.”

* * * * *

An immense restlessness came over them.

At a quarter-past eight Dorothy telephoned from her club in Grafton street.  Frank had had to leave her suddenly.  Somebody had sent for him.  And if they wanted to see the sight of their lives they were to come into town at once.  St. James’s was packed with people from Whitehall to Buckingham Palace.  It was like nothing on earth, and they mustn’t miss it.  She’d wait for them in Grafton Street till a quarter to nine, but not a minute later.

Nicky got out his big four-seater Morss car.  They packed themselves into it, all six of them somehow, and he drove them into London.  They had a sense of doing something strange and memorable and historic.  Dorothy, picked up at her club, showed nothing but a pleasurable excitement.  She gave no further information about Frank.  He had had to go off and see somebody.  What did he think?  He thought what he had always thought; only he wouldn’t talk about it.

Dorothy was not inclined to talk about it either.  The Morss was caught in a line blocked at the bottom of Albemarle Street by two streams of cars, mixed with two streams of foot passengers, that poured steadily from Piccadilly into St. James’s Street.

Michael and Dorothy got out and walked.  Nicholas gave up his place to Anthony and followed with Veronica.

Their restlessness had been a part of the immense restlessness of the crowd.  They were drawn, as the crowd was drawn; they went as the crowd went, up and down, restlessly, from Trafalgar Square and Whitehall to Buckingham Palace; from Buckingham Palace to Whitehall and Trafalgar Square.  They drifted down Parliament Street to Westminster and back again.  An hour ago the drifting, nebulous crowd had split, torn asunder between two attractions; its two masses had wheeled away, one to the east and the other to the west; they had gathered themselves together, one at each pole of the space it now traversed.  The great meeting in Trafalgar Square balanced the multitude that had gravitated towards Buckingham Palace, to see the King and Queen come out on their balcony and show themselves to their people.