“He is a firebrand,” she said.  “I read that book of his against War—­most inflammatory.  Aimed at Grant-and Rosenstern, chiefly.  I’ve just seen, one of the results, outside my own gates.  A mob of anti-War agitators.”

Lord Valleys controlled a yawn.

“Really?  I’d no idea Courtier had any influence.”

“He is dangerous.  Most idealists are negligible-his book was clever.”

“I wish to goodness we could see the last of these scares, they only make both countries look foolish,” muttered Lord Valleys.

Lady Casterley raised her glass, full of a bloody red wine.  “The war would save us,” she said.

“War is no joke.”

“It would be the beginning of a better state of things.”

“You think so?”

“We should get the lead again as a nation, and Democracy would be put back fifty years.”

Lord Valleys made three little heaps of salt, and paused to count them; then, with a slight uplifting of his eyebrows, which seemed to doubt what he was going to say, he murmured:  “I should have said that we were all democrats nowadays....  What is it, Clifton?”

“Your chauffeur would like to know, what time you will have the car?”

“Directly after dinner.”

Twenty minutes later, he was turning through the scrolled iron gates into the road for London.  It was falling dark; and in the tremulous sky clouds were piled up, and drifted here and there with a sort of endless lack of purpose.  No direction seemed to have been decreed unto their wings.  They had met together in the firmament like a flock of giant magpies crossing and re-crossing each others’ flight.  The smell of rain was in the air.  The car raised no dust, but bored swiftly on, searching out the road with its lamps.  On Putney Bridge its march was stayed by a string of waggons.  Lord Valleys looked to right and left.  The river reflected the thousand lights of buildings piled along her sides, lamps of the embankments, lanterns of moored barges.  The sinuous pallid body of this great Creature, for ever gliding down to the sea, roused in his mind no symbolic image.  He had had to do with her, years back, at the Board of Trade, and knew her for what she was, extremely dirty, and getting abominably thin just where he would have liked her plump.  Yet, as he lighted a cigar, there came to him a queer feeling—­as if he were in the presence of a woman he was fond of.

“I hope to God,” he thought, “nothing’ll come of these scares!” The car glided on into the long road, swarming with traffic, towards the fashionable heart of London.  Outside stationers’ shops, however, the posters of evening papers were of no reassuring order.

‘Theplot thickens.’ 
‘More revelations.’ 
‘Grave situation threatened.’

And before each poster could be seen a little eddy in the stream of the passers-by—­formed by persons glancing at the news, and disengaging themselves, to press on again.  The Earl of Valleys caught himself wondering what they thought of it!  What was passing behind those pale rounds of flesh turned towards the posters?