These actions, together with the incessant commerce of banks, laboratories, chancellories, and houses of business, are the strokes which oar the world forward, they say.  And they are dealt by men as smoothly sculptured as the impassive policeman at Ludgate Circus.  But you will observe that far from being padded to rotundity his face is stiff from force of will, and lean from the efforts of keeping it so.  When his right arm rises, all the force in his veins flows straight from shoulder to finger-tips; not an ounce is diverted into sudden impulses, sentimental regrets, wire-drawn distinctions.  The buses punctually stop.

It is thus that we live, they say, driven by an unseizable force.  They say that the novelists never catch it; that it goes hurtling through their nets and leaves them torn to ribbons.  This, they say, is what we live by—­this unseizable force.

“Where are the men?” said old General Gibbons, looking round the drawing-room, full as usual on Sunday afternoons of well-dressed people.  “Where are the guns?”

Mrs. Durrant looked too.

Clara, thinking that her mother wanted her, came in; then went out again.

They were talking about Germany at the Durrants, and Jacob (driven by this unseizable force) walked rapidly down Hermes Street and ran straight into the Williamses.

“Oh!” cried Sandra, with a cordiality which she suddenly felt.  And Evan added, “What luck!”

The dinner which they gave him in the hotel which looks on to the Square of the Constitution was excellent.  Plated baskets contained fresh rolls.  There was real butter.  And the meat scarcely needed the disguise of innumerable little red and green vegetables glazed in sauce.

It was strange, though.  There were the little tables set out at intervals on the scarlet floor with the Greek King’s monogram wrought in yellow.  Sandra dined in her hat, veiled as usual.  Evan looked this way and that over his shoulder; imperturbable yet supple; and sometimes sighed.  It was strange.  For they were English people come together in Athens on a May evening.  Jacob, helping himself to this and that, answered intelligently, yet with a ring in his voice.

The Williamses were going to Constantinople early next morning, they said.

“Before you are up,” said Sandra.

They would leave Jacob alone, then.  Turning very slightly, Evan ordered something—­a bottle of wine—­from which he helped Jacob, with a kind of solicitude, with a kind of paternal solicitude, if that were possible.  To be left alone—­that was good for a young fellow.  Never was there a time when the country had more need of men.  He sighed.

“And you have been to the Acropolis?” asked Sandra.

“Yes,” said Jacob.  And they moved off to the window together, while Evan spoke to the head waiter about calling them early.

“It is astonishing,” said Jacob, in a gruff voice.