“I may not be here,” she continued, “when the new plans are submitted.  Tell them not to forget the foundation this time.  Tell them to teach the children.”

Joan dined at a popular restaurant that evening.  She fancied it might cheer her up.  But the noisy patriotism of the over-fed crowd only irritated her.  These elderly, flabby men, these fleshy women, who would form the spectators, who would loll on their cushioned seats protected from the sun, munching contentedly from their well-provided baskets while listening to the dying groans rising upwards from the drenched arena.  She glanced from one podgy thumb to another and a feeling of nausea crept over her.

Suddenly the band struck up “God Save the King.”  Three commonplace enough young men, seated at a table near to her, laid down their napkins and stood up.  Yes, there was something to be said for war, she felt, as she looked at their boyish faces, transfigured.  Not for them Business as usual, the Capture of German Trade.  Other visions those young eyes were seeing.  The little imp within her brain had seized his drum again.  “Follow me”—­so he seemed to beat—­“I teach men courage, duty, the laying down of self.  I open the gates of honour.  I make heroes out of dust.  Isn’t it worth my price?”

A figure was loitering the other side of the street when she reached home.  She thought she somehow recognized it, and crossed over.  It was McKean, smoking his everlasting pipe.  Success having demanded some such change, he had migrated to “The Albany,” and she had not seen him for some time.  He had come to have a last look at the house—­in case it might happen to be the last.  He was off to Scotland the next morning, where he intended to “join up.”

“But are you sure it’s your particular duty?” suggested Joan.  “I’m told you’ve become a household word both in Germany and France.  If we really are out to end war and establish the brotherhood of nations, the work you are doing is of more importance than even the killing of Germans.  It isn’t as if there wouldn’t be enough without you.”

“To tell the truth,” he answered, “that’s exactly what I’ve been saying to myself.  I shan’t be any good.  I don’t see myself sticking a bayonet into even a German.  Unless he happened to be abnormally clumsy.  I tried to shoot a rabbit once.  I might have done it if the little beggar, instead of running away, hadn’t turned and looked at me.”

“I should keep out of it if I were you,” laughed Joan.

“I can’t,” he answered.  “I’m too great a coward.”

“An odd reason for enlisting,” thought Joan.

“I couldn’t face it,” he went on; “the way people would be looking at me in trains and omnibuses; the things people would say of me, the things I should imagine they were saying; what my valet would be thinking of me.  Oh, I’m ashamed enough of myself.  It’s the artistic temperament, I suppose.  We must always be admired, praised.  We’re not the stuff that martyrs are made of.  We must for ever be kow-towing to the cackling geese around us.  We’re so terrified lest they should hiss us.”