“Suppose they don’t?”

She did not trouble about the hypothesis.  “And our investments will recover.  They always do recover.”

“Everything may recover,” he admitted.  “But also nothing may recover.  All this life of ours which has seemed so settled and secure—­isn’t secure.  I have felt that we were fixed here and rooted—­for all our lives.  Suppose presently things sweep us out of it?  It’s a possibility we may have to face.  I feel this morning as if two enormous gates had opened in our lives, like the gates that give upon an arena, gates giving on a darkness—­through which anything might come.  Even death.  Suppose suddenly we were to see one of those great Zeppelins in the air, or hear the thunder of guns away towards the coast.  And if a messenger came upon a bicycle telling us to leave everything and go inland....”

“I see no reason why one should go out to meet things like that.”

“But there is no reason why one should not envisage them....”

“The curious thing,” said Mr. Britling, pursuing his examination of the matter, “is that, looking at these things as one does now, as things quite possible, they are not nearly so terrifying and devastating to the mind as they would have seemed—­last week.  I believe I should load you all into Gladys and start off westward with a kind of exhilaration....”

She looked at him as if she would speak, and said nothing.  She suspected him of hating his home and affecting to care for it out of politeness to her....

“Perhaps mankind tries too much to settle down.  Perhaps these stirrings up have to occur to save us from our disposition to stuffy comfort.  There’s the magic call of the unknown experience, of dangers and hardships.  One wants to go.  But unless some push comes one does not go.  There is a spell that keeps one to the lair and the old familiar ways.  Now I am afraid—­and at the same time I feel that the spell is broken.  The magic prison is suddenly all doors.  You may call this ruin, bankruptcy, invasion, flight; they are doors out of habit and routine....  I have been doing nothing for so long, except idle things and discursive things.”

“I thought that you managed to be happy here.  You have done a lot of work.”

“Writing is recording, not living.  But now I feel suddenly that we are living intensely.  It is as if the whole quality of life was changing.  There are such times.  There are times when the spirit of life changes altogether.  The old world knew that better than we do.  It made a distinction between weekdays and Sabbaths, and between feasts and fasts and days of devotion.  That is just what has happened now.  Week-day rules must be put aside.  Before—­oh! three days ago, competition was fair, it was fair and tolerable to get the best food one could and hold on to one’s own.  But that isn’t right now.  War makes a Sabbath, and we shut the shops.  The banks are shut, and the world still feels as though Sunday was keeping on....”