Such a vision—­whether fantasy or prophecy—­could not fail to stir Lilamani Sinclair’s Eastern heart to its depths.  But she shrank from sceptical comment; and sceptical Nevil would surely be.  As for Roy, intuition warned her it was too heady an idea to implant in his ardent brain.  So she treasured it secretly, and read it at intervals, and prayed that, some day, it might be fulfilled—­if not through her, then through some other Lilamani, who should find courage to link her life with England.  Above all, she prayed he who should achieve India’s renewal might spring from Rajasthan....

In the midst of her thinking and praying, she fell sound asleep—­to dream of Roy tossed out of reach on the waves of some large vague upheaval.  The ‘how’ and ‘why’ of it all eluded her.  Only the vivid impression remained....

* * * * *

And before the week was out, an upheaval, actual and terrible, burst upon a startled, unheeding world; a world lulled into a false sense of security; and too strenuously engaged in rushing headlong round a centrifugal point called ‘progress,’ to concern itself with a mythical peril across the North Sea.

But at the first clear note of danger, devotees of pleasure and progress and the franchise were transformed, as by magic, into a crowd of bewildered, curious and resentful human beings, who had suddenly lost their bearings; who snatched at newspapers; confided in perfect strangers; protested that a European War was unspeakable, unthinkable, and all the while could speak and think of nothing else....

It was the nightmare terror of earthquake, when the solid ground underfoot turns traitor.  And it shook even the stoutest nerves in the opening weeks of the Great War, destined to shatter their dear and familiar world for months, years, decades perhaps....

But underlying all the froth and fume of the earlier restlessness, of the later fear and futility, the strong, kindly, imperturbable heart of the land still beat, sanely—­if inconspicuously—­in the home life of her cottages and her great country houses.  Twentieth-century England could not be called degenerate while she counted among her hidden treasures homes of such charm and culture and mutual confidence as those that produced the Grenfells, the Charltons, a Lord Elcho, an Edward Tennant and a Charles Sorley—­to pick a few names at random from that galaxy of ‘golden boys’ who ungrudgingly gave their lives—­for what?

The answer to that staggering question is not yet.  But the splendour of their gift remains:  a splendour no after-failure can tarnish or dim ...

To the inmates of Bramleigh Beeches—­Nevil excepted—­the crash came with startling abruptness; dwarfing all personal problems, heart-searchings and high decisions.  Even Lady Roscoe forgot Family Herald heroics, and ‘crossed the threshold’ without comment from Nevil or herself.  The weightiest matters became suddenly trivial beside the tremendous questions that hovered in every mind and on every tongue:  ’Can We hold Them?’ ‘Can They invade Us?’ ’Can it be true—­this whispered horror, that rumoured disaster?’ And the test question—­most tremendous of all, for the mere unit—­’Where do I come in?’