d ... Mr. Britling's mind
swung back to elation. He took down the entire despatch from Mr.
Manning's dictation, and ran out with it into the garden where Mrs.
Britling, with an unwonted expression of anxiety, was presiding over the
teas of the usual casual Sunday gathering.... The despatch was read
aloud twice over. After that there was hockey and high spirits, and then
Mr. Britling went up to his study to answer a letter from Mrs.
Harrowdean, the first letter that had come from her since their breach
at the outbreak of the war, and which he was now in a better mood to
answer than he had been hitherto.

She had written ignoring his silence and absence, or rather treating it
as if it were an incident of no particular importance. Apparently she
had not called upon the patient and devoted Oliver as she had
threatened; at any rate, there were no signs of Oliver in her
communication. But she reproached Mr. Britling for deserting her, and
she clamoured for his presence and for kind and strengthening words. She
was, she said, scared by this war. She was only a little thing, and it
was all too dreadful, and there was not a soul in the world to hold her
hand, at least no one who understood in the slightest degree how she
felt. (But why was not Oliver holding her hand?) She was like a child
left alone in the dark. It was perfectly horrible the way that people
were being kept in the dark. The stories one heard, "_often from quite
trustworthy sources_," were enough to depress and terrify any one.
Battleship after battleship had been sunk by German torpedoes, a thing
kept secret from us for no earthly reason, and Prince Louis of
Battenberg had been discovered to be a spy and had been sent to the
Tower. Haldane too was a spy. Our army in France had been "practically
_sold_" by the French. Almost all the French generals were in German
pay. The censorship and the press were keeping all this back, but what
good was it to keep it back? It was folly not to trust people! But it
was all too dreadful for a poor little soul whose only desire was to
live happily. Why didn't he come along to her and make her feel she had
protecting arms round her? She couldn't think in the daytime: she
couldn't sleep at night....

Then she broke away into the praises of serenity. Never had she thought
so much of his beautiful "Silent Places" as she did now. How she longed
to take refuge in some such dreamland from violence and treachery and
foolish rumours! S