that received the
aeroplanes. Aeroplanes fell out of the sky every afternoon, each bringing
its thousands of pleasure-seekers from the uttermost parts of the earth to
Capri and its delights. All these things, I say, stretched below.

"But we noticed them only incidentally because of an unusual sight that
evening had to show. Five war aeroplanes that had long slumbered useless
in the distant arsenals of the Rhine-mouth were manoeuvring now in the
eastward sky. Gresham had astonished the world by producing them and
others, and sending them to circle here and there. It was the threat
material in the great game of bluff he was playing, and it had taken even
me by surprise. He was one of those incredibly stupid energetic people who
seem sent by heaven to create disasters. His energy to the first glance
seemed so wonderfully like capacity! But he had no imagination, no
invention, only a stupid, vast, driving force of will, and a mad faith in
his stupid idiot 'luck' to pull him through. I remember how we stood out
upon the headland watching the squadron circling far away, and how I
weighed the full meaning of the sight, seeing clearly the way things must
_go_. And then even it was not too late. I might have gone back, I
think, and saved the world. The people of the north would follow me, I
knew, granted only that in one thing I respected their moral standards.
The east and south would trust me as they would trust no other northern
man. And I knew I had only to put it to her and she would have let me
go... Not because she did not love me!

"Only I did not want to go; my will was all the other way about. I had so
newly thrown off the incubus of responsibility: I was still so fresh a
renegade from duty that the daylight clearness of what I _ought_ to
do had no power at all to touch my will. My will was to live, to gather
pleasures, and make my dear lady happy. But though this sense of vast
neglected duties had no power to draw me, it could make me silent and
preoccupied, it robbed the days I had spent of half their brightness and
roused me into dark meditations in the silence of the night. And as I
stood and watched Gresham's aeroplanes sweep to and fro--those birds of
infinite ill omen--she stood beside me, watching me, perceiving the
trouble indeed, but not perceiving it clearly--her eyes questioning my
face, her expression shaded with perplexity. Her face was grey because the
sunset was fading out of the sky. It was no fault o