The vision of what ought to be done shone brightly while Mr. Britling and Mr. Wilkins maintained it.  But presently under discouraging reminders that there were no rifles, no instructors, and, above all, the open hostility of the established authorities, it faded again....

Afterwards in other conversations Mr. Britling reverted to more modest ambitions.

“Is there no clerical work, no minor administrative work, a man might be used for?” he asked.

“Any old dug-out,” said the man with the thin face, “any old doddering Colonel Newcome, is preferred to you in that matter....”

Mr. Britling emerged from his club about half-past three with his mind rather dishevelled and with his private determination to do something promptly for his country’s needs blunted by a perplexing “How?” His search for doors and ways where no doors and ways existed went on with a gathering sense of futility.

He had a ridiculous sense of pique at being left out, like a child shut out from a room in which a vitally interesting game is being played.

“After all, it is our war,” he said.

He caught the phrase as it dropped from his lips with a feeling that it said more than he intended.  He turned it over and examined it, and the more he did so the more he was convinced of its truth and soundness....

Section 2

By night there was a new strangeness about London.  The authorities were trying to suppress the more brilliant illumination of the chief thoroughfares, on account of the possibility of an air raid.  Shopkeepers were being compelled to pull down their blinds, and many of the big standard lights were unlit.  Mr. Britling thought these precautions were very fussy and unnecessary, and likely to lead to accidents amidst the traffic.  But it gave a Rembrandtesque quality to the London scene, turned it into mysterious arrangements of brown shadows and cones and bars of light.  At first many people were recalcitrant, and here and there a restaurant or a draper’s window still blazed out and broke the gloom.  There were also a number of insubordinate automobiles with big head-lights.  But the police were being unusually firm....

“It will all glitter again in a little time,” he told himself.

He heard an old lady who was projecting from an offending automobile at Piccadilly Circus in hot dispute with a police officer.  “Zeppelins indeed!” she said.  “What nonsense!  As if they would dare to come here!  Who would let them, I should like to know?”

Probably a friend of Lady Frensham’s, he thought.  Still—­the idea of Zeppelins over London did seem rather ridiculous to Mr. Britling.  He would not have liked to have been caught talking of it himself....  There never had been Zeppelins over London.  They were gas bags....

Section 3