Outside the Palace the crowd moved up and down without rest; it drifted and returned; it circled round and round the fountain.  In the open spaces the intoxicated motor-cars and taxi-cabs darted and tore with the folly of moths and the fury of destroyers.  They stung the air with their hooting.  Flags, intoxicated flags, still hung from their engines.  They came flying drunkenly out of the dark, like a trumpeting swarm of enormous insects, irresistibly, incessantly drawn to the lights of the Palace, hypnotized by the golden-white facade.

Suddenly, Michael’s soul revolted.

“If this demented herd of swine is a great people going into a great war, God help us!  Beasts—­it’s not as if their bloated skins were likely to be punctured.”

He called back over his shoulders to the others.

“Let’s get out of this.  If we don’t I shall be sick.”

He took Dorothy by her arm and shouldered his way out.

The water had ceased playing in the fountain.

Nicholas and Veronica stood by the fountain.  The water in the basin was green like foul sea-water.  The jetsam of the crowd floated there.  A small child leaned over the edge of the basin and fished for Union Jacks in the filthy pool.  Its young mother held it safe by the tilted edge of its petticoats.  She looked up at them and smiled.  They smiled back again and turned away.

It was quiet on the south side by the Barracks.  Small, sober groups of twos and threes strolled there, or stood with their faces pressed close against the railings, peering into the barrack yard.  Motionless, earnest and attentive, they stared at the men in khaki moving about on the other side of the railings.  They were silent, fascinated by the men in khaki.  Standing safe behind the railing, they stared at them with an awful, sombre curiosity.  And the men in khaki stared back, proud, self-conscious, as men who know that the hour is great and that it is their hour.

“Nicky,” Veronica said, “I wish Michael wouldn’t say things like that.”

“He’s dead right, Ronny.  That isn’t the way to take it, getting drunk and excited, and rushing about making silly asses of themselves.  They are rather swine, you know.”

“Yes; but they’re pathetic.  Can’t you see how pathetic they are?  Nicky, I believe I love the swine—­even the poor drunken ones with the pink paper feathers—­just because they’re English; because awful things are going to happen to them, and they don’t know it.  They’re English.”

“You think God’s made us all like that?  He hasn’t.”

They found Anthony in the Mall, driving up and down, looking for them.  He had picked up Dorothy and Aunt Emmeline and Uncle Morrie.

“We’re going down to the Mansion House,” he said, “to hear the Proclamation.  Will you come?”

But Veronica and Nicholas were tired of crowds, even of historic crowds.  Anthony drove off with his car-load, and they went home.