only a little thing, and it was all too dreadful, and there was not a soul in the world to hold her hand, at least no one who understood in the slightest degree how she felt. (But why was not Oliver holding her hand?) She was like a child left alone in the dark.  It was perfectly horrible the way that people were being kept in the dark.  The stories one heard, “often from quite trustworthy sources,” were enough to depress and terrify any one.  Battleship after battleship had been sunk by German torpedoes, a thing kept secret from us for no earthly reason, and Prince Louis of Battenberg had been discovered to be a spy and had been sent to the Tower.  Haldane too was a spy.  Our army in France had been “practically sold” by the French.  Almost all the French generals were in German pay.  The censorship and the press were keeping all this back, but what good was it to keep it back?  It was folly not to trust people!  But it was all too dreadful for a poor little soul whose only desire was to live happily.  Why didn’t he come along to her and make her feel she had protecting arms round her?  She couldn’t think in the daytime:  she couldn’t sleep at night....

Then she broke away into the praises of serenity.  Never had she thought so much of his beautiful “Silent Places” as she did now.  How she longed to take refuge in some such dreamland from violence and treachery and foolish rumours!  She was weary of every reality.  She wanted to fly away into some secret hiding-place and cultivate her simple garden there—­as Voltaire had done....  Sometimes at night she was afraid to undress.  She imagined the sound of guns, she imagined landings and frightful scouts “in masks” rushing inland on motor bicycles....

It was an ill-timed letter.  The nonsense about Prince Louis of Battenberg and Lord Haldane and the torpedoed battleships annoyed him extravagantly.  He had just sufficient disposition to believe such tales as to find their importunity exasperating.  The idea of going over to Pyecrafts to spend his days in comforting a timid little dear obsessed by such fears, attracted him not at all.  He had already heard enough adverse rumours at Claverings to make him thoroughly uncomfortable.  He had been doubting whether after all his “Examination of War” was really much less of a futility than “And Now War Ends”; his mind was full of a sense of incomplete statements and unsubstantial arguments.  He was indeed in a state of extreme intellectual worry.  He was moreover extraordinarily out of love with Mrs. Harrowdean.  Never had any affection in the whole history of Mr. Britling’s heart collapsed so swiftly and completely.  He was left incredulous of ever having cared for her at all.  Probably he hadn’t.  Probably the whole business had been deliberate illusion from first to last.  The “dear little thing” business, he felt, was all very well as a game of petting, but times were serious now, and a woman of her intelligence should do something better than wallow in fears and elaborate a winsome feebleness.  A very unnecessary and tiresome feebleness.  He came almost to the pitch of writing that to her.