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that these people wanted war, or would have sought it had it not been thrust on them. The whole monstrous injustice seemed to take shape before him, and to brood like a huge sky-filling dragon of the northern darknesses over his light-loving, pleasure-loving, labour-loving France.

George came home late.

It was two in the morning of his last day with his boy when Campton heard the door open, and saw a flash of turned-on light.

All night he had lain staring into the darkness, and thinking, thinking: thinking of George's future, George's friends, George and women, of that unknown side of his boy's life which, in this great upheaval of things, had suddenly lifted its face to the surface. If war came, if George were not discharged, if George were sent to the front, if George were killed, how strange to think that things the father did not know of might turn out to have been the central things of his son's life!

The young man came in, and Campton looked at him as though he were a stranger.

"Hullo, Dad—any news from the Ministry?" George, tossing aside his hat and stick, sat down on the bed. He had a crumpled rose in his button-hole, and looked gay and fresh, with the indestructible freshness of youth.