The despatch from General French put him into a kindlier frame of mind.  He wrote instead briefly but affectionately.  As a gentleman should.  “How could you doubt our fleet or our army?” was the gist of his letter.  He ignored completely every suggestion of a visit to Pyecrafts that her letter had conveyed.  He pretended that it had contained nothing of the sort....  And with that she passed out of his mind again under the stress of more commanding interests....

Mr. Britling’s mood of relief did not last through the week.  The defeated Germans continued to advance.  Through a week of deepening disillusionment the main tide of battle rolled back steadily towards Paris.  Lille was lost without a struggle.  It was lost with mysterious ease....  The next name to startle Mr. Britling as he sat with newspaper and atlas following these great events was Compiegne.  “Here!” Manifestly the British were still in retreat.  Then the Germans were in possession of Laon and Rheims and still pressing south.  Maubeuge surrounded and cut off for some days, had apparently fallen....

It was on Sunday, September the sixth, that the final capitulation of Mr. Britling’s facile optimism occurred.

He stood in the sunshine reading the Observer which the gardener’s boy had just brought from the May Tree.  He had spread it open on a garden table under the blue cedar, and father and son were both reading it, each as much as the other would let him.  There was fresh news from France, a story of further German advances, fighting at Senlis—­“But that is quite close to Paris!”—­and the appearance of German forces at Nogent-sur-Seine.  “Sur Seine!” cried Mr. Britling.  “But where can that be?  South of the Marne?  Or below Paris perhaps?”

It was not marked upon the Observer’s map, and Hugh ran into the house for the atlas.

When he returned Mr. Manning was with his father, and they both looked grave.

Hugh opened the map of northern France.  “Here it is,” he said.

Mr. Britling considered the position.

“Manning says they are at Rouen,” he told Hugh.  “Our base is to be moved round to La Rochelle....”

He paused before the last distasteful conclusion.

“Practically,” he admitted, taking his dose, “they have got Paris.  It is almost surrounded now.”

He sat down to the map.  Mr. Manning and Hugh stood regarding him.  He made a last effort to imagine some tremendous strategic reversal, some stone from an unexpected sling that should fell this Goliath in the midst of his triumph.

“Russia,” he said, without any genuine hope....

Section 17

And then it was that Mr. Britling accepted the truth.