e thinking; it was, at any rate, the main
current of his thinking; but all the same, just outside the circle of
his attention a number of other things were dimly apprehended, bobbing
up and down in the flood and ready at the slightest chance to swirl into
the centre of his thoughts. There was, for instance, Captain Carmine in
the moonlight lugging up a railway embankment something horrible,
something loose and wet and warm that had very recently been a man.
There was Teddy, serious and patriotic--filling a futile penman with
incredulous respect. There was the thin-faced man at the club, and a
curious satisfaction he had betrayed in the public disarrangement. And
there was Hugh. Particularly there was Hugh, silent but watchful. The
boy never babbled. He had his mother's gift of deep dark silences. Out
of which she was wont to flash, a Black Princess waving a sword. He
wandered for a little while among memories.... But Hugh didn't come out
like that, though it always seemed possible he might--perhaps he didn't
come out because he was a son. Revelation to his father wasn't his
business.... What was he thinking of it all? What was he going to do?
Mr. Britling was acutely anxious that his son should volunteer; he was
almost certain that he would volunteer, but there was just a little
shadow of doubt whether some extraordinary subtlety of mind mightn't
have carried the boy into a pacifist attitude. No! that was impossible.
In the face of Belgium.... But as greatly--and far more deeply in the
warm flesh of his being--did Mr. Britling desire that no harm, no evil
should happen to Hugh....

The door opened, and Hugh came in....

Mr. Britling glanced over his shoulder with an affectation of
indifference. "Hal-_lo!_" he said. "What do you want?"

Hugh walked awkwardly to the hearthrug.

"Oh!" he said in an off-hand tone; "I suppose I've got to go soldiering
for a bit. I just thought--I'd rather like to go off with a man I know
to-morrow...."

Mr. Britling's manner remained casual.

"It's the only thing to do now, I'm afraid," he said.

He turned in his chair and regarded his son. "What do you mean to do?
O.T.C.?"

"I don't think I should make much of an officer. I hate giving orders to
other people. We thought we'd just go together into the Essex Regiment
as privates...."

There was a little pause. Both father and son had rehearsed this scene
in their minds several times, and now they found that they had no use
for a n