hind;
and now the handkerchiefs were waved in a new fever of energy as if with
the fading of the faces there had fallen upon the assembly a fresh
communal grief, a grief that, no longer regarding personal heartbreaks,
frantically pursued the great graceful ship herself whose prow was
straining for the open sea. Still, though now scarcely even were human
forms discernible upon the decks, the handkerchiefs jigged on for
horribly mechanic gestures, as if those who waved them were become
automatons through sorrow.

Glad of the musty peace of a railway-carriage after the tears and
confusion of the docks, Michael and Alan and Mrs. Ross spoke very little
on the journey back to London.

"Aren't you going to stay the night with us at Richmond?" Alan asked.

"No, I must get down to Cobble Place. My large son has already gone
there with his nurse."

"Your son?" exclaimed Michael. "Oh, of course, I forgot."

So Alan and he put Mrs. Ross into her train and rode back together on an
omnibus, proud citizens of an Empire whose inspiration they had lately
beheld in action.

Next morning the Olympians on their frieze were considerably impressed
by Michael's account of the stirring scene at Southampton.

"Oh, the war will be over almost at once. We're not taking any risks.
We're sending out enough men to conquer more than the Transvaal," said
the heroes wisely.

But soon there came the news of fresh defeats, and when in the middle of
January school reassembled there were actually figures missing from the
familiar composition itself. Actually contemporary heroes had left, had
enlisted in the Volunteers and Yeomanry, were even now waiting for
orders and meantime self-consciously wandering round the school-grounds
in militant khaki. Sandhurst and Woolwich candidates passed with
incredible ease; boys were coming to school in mourning; Old Jacobeans
died bravely, and their deaths were recorded in the school magazine; one
Old Jacobean gained the Victoria Cross, and everyone walked from prayers
very proudly upon that day.

Michael was still conventionally patriotic, but sometimes with the
progress of the war a doubt would creep into his mind whether this
increasing blazonry of a country's emotion were so fine as once he had
thought it, whether England were losing some of her self-control under
reverses, and, worst of all, whether in her victories she were becoming
blatant. He remembered how he had been sickened by the accounts of
Amer