Above all he knew it as something apart when he saw how it had seized and mastered Phillida. She was curiously alive to its sweep and emotion, and beneath her outward daintiness lay the power of fervid partisanship. “If it weren’t for you,” she told him once, “I should break my heart because I’m only a woman”; and he saw that she pitied him, that she was even resentful for his sake, when she learned from her father that there was no question of allowing the clerks of the Distribution Office to volunteer for military service.
“He says the Department will need all its trained men and that modern war is won by organization even more than by fighting. I’m glad you won’t have to go, my dear—I’m glad—” and, saying it, she clung to him as to one who stood in need of consolation.
He felt the implied consolation and sympathy—with a twinge of conscience, not entirely sure of deserving it. But for the rigid departmental order, he knew he should have thought it his duty to volunteer and take his share of the danger that others were clamouring to face; but he had not cursed vehemently, like his junior, Cassidy, when Holles, equally blasphemous, burst into the room with the news that enlistment was barred. He thought of Cassidy’s angry blue eyes as he swore that, by hook or by crook, he would find his way into the air-service. … Phillida would have sympathized with Cassidy and the flash of her eyes answered his; she too, for the moment, was one with the crowd-life, and there were moments when he felt it was sweeping her away from his hold.
He felt it most on their last evening, on the night the ultimatum expired; when he came from the office, after hours of overtime, uncertain whether he should find her, wondering whether her excited restlessness had driven her out into the crowds that surged round Whitehall. As he ran up the stairs the sound of a piano drifted from the room above; no definite melody but a vague, irregular striking of chords that came to an end as he entered the room and Phillida looked up, expectant.
“At last,” she said as she ran to him. “You don’t know how I have wanted you. I can’t be alone—if you hadn’t turned up I should have had to find someone to talk to.”
“Anyone—didn’t matter who?” he suggested.
She laughed, caught his hand and rubbed her cheek against it. “Yes, anyone—you know what I mean. It’s just—when you think of what’s happening, how can you keep still? … As for father, I never see him nowadays. I suppose there isn’t any news?”
“There can’t be,” he answered. “Not till twelve.”
“No—and even at twelve it won’t really be news. Just no answer—and the time will be up. … We’re at peace now—till midnight. … What’s the time?”
He longed to be alone with her—alone with her in thought as well as in outward seeming—but her talk slipped restlessly away from his leading and she moved uncertainly about the room, returning at last to her vague striking of the piano—sharp, isolated notes, and then suddenly a masterful chord.
“Play to me,” he asked, “play properly.”
She shook her head and declared it was impossible.
“Anything connected is beyond me; I can only strum and make noises.” She crashed in the bass, rushed a swift arpeggio to the treble, then turned to him, her eyes wide and glowing. “If you hold your breath, can’t you feel them all waiting?—thousands on thousands—all through the world? … Waiting till midnight … can’t you feel it?”
“You make me feel it,” he answered. “Tell me—you want war?”
The last words came out involuntarily, and it was only the startled, sudden change in her face that brought home to him what he had said.
“I want war,” she echoed. … “I want men to be killed. … Theodore, what makes you say that?”
He fumbled for words, not sure of his own meaning—sure only that her eyes would change and lose their fervour if, at the last moment and by God-sent miracle, the sword were returned to its sheath.
“Not that, of course—not the actual fighting. I didn’t mean that. … But isn’t there something in you—in you and in everyone—that’s too strong to be arrested? Too swift? … If nothing happened—if we drew back—you couldn’t be still now; you couldn’t endure it. …”
She looked at him thoughtfully, puzzled, half-assenting; then protested again: “I don’t want it—but we can’t be still and endure evil.”
“No,” he said, “we can’t—but isn’t there a gladness in the thought that we can’t?”
“Because we’re right,” she flashed. “It’s not selfish—you know it isn’t selfish. We see what is right and,
