Then followed a halcyon time.  The two friends had long known that they had only one heart between them; and now, living under the same roof and going into the same society, they lived practically one life.  There was just enough separation to make reunion more delightful—­a dull debate at the House for Vaughan, or a dusty field-day at Aldershot for Grey; but for both there was the early gallop in Rotten Row, the breakfast which no third person ever shared, the evening of social amusement, and the long, deep, intimate talk over the last cigar, when the doings of the day were reviewed and the programme for to-morrow was sketched.

Grey had always been popular and always lighthearted.  Vaughan, as a schoolboy and an undergraduate, had been unpopular and grave.  But now people who knew them both observed that, at any rate as far as outward characteristics showed, the two natures were becoming harmonized.  Vaughan was a visibly lighter, brighter, and more companionable fellow; and Grey began to manifest something of that manly seriousness which was wanted to complete his character.  It is pleasant to contemplate “one entire and perfect chrysolite” of happiness, and that, during these bright years of opening manhood, was the rare and fragile possession of Philip Vaughan and Arthur Grey.

* * * * *

John Bright was once walking with one of his sons, then a schoolboy, past the Guards’ Memorial in Waterloo Place.  The boy asked the meaning of the single word inscribed on the base, CRIMEA.  Bright’s answer was as emphatic as the inscription:  “A crime.”  There is no need to recapitulate in this place the series of blunders through which this country, in Lord Clarendon’s phrase, “drifted towards war.”  Month by month things shaped themselves in a way which left no reasonable doubt about the issue.  The two friends said little.  Deep in the heart of each there lay the conviction that an event was at hand which would “pierce even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow.”  But each held the conviction with a difference.  To Grey it meant the approach of that to which, from the days of his chivalrous boyhood, he had looked forward, as the supreme good of life—­the chance of a soldier’s glory and a soldier’s death.  To Vaughan it meant simply the extinction of all that made life worth living.  Each foresaw an agony, but the one foresaw it with a joy which no affection could subdue; the other with a despair which even religion seemed powerless to relieve.  Before long silence became impossible.  The decision of the Cabinet was made known.  Two strong and ardent natures, which since boyhood had lived in and on one another, were forced to admit that a separation, which might be eternal, “was nigh, even at the doors.”  But there was this vital difference between the two cases—­the one had to act; the other only to endure.

On the 22nd of February, 1854, the Guards sailed from Southampton, and on the 27th of March war between England and Russia was formally declared.