don't know if ever one will even be able to make
it up again." Francis tilted his handsome eyebrows and put his head on
one side with a wise-distressed look.

"No," said Angus. "One will never be able to make it up. What is
more, one will never be able to start again where one left off. We're
shattered old men, now, in one sense. And in another sense, we're just
pre-war babies."

The speech was uttered with an odd abruptness and didacticism which made
Aaron open his eyes. Angus had that peculiar manner: he seemed to be
haranguing himself in the circle of his own thoughts, not addressing
himself to his listener.

So his listener listened on the outside edge of the young fellow's
crowded thoughts. Francis put on a distressed air, and let his attention
wander. Angus pursed his lips and his eyes were stretched wide with a
kind of pleasure, like a wicked owl which has just joyfully hooted an
ill omen.

"Tell me," said Francis to Aaron. "Where were YOU all the time during
the war?"

"I was doing my job," said Aaron. Which led to his explaining his
origins.

"Really! So your music is quite new! But how interesting!" cried
Francis.

Aaron explained further.

"And so the war hardly affected you? But what did you FEEL about it,
privately?"

"I didn't feel much. I didn't know what to feel. Other folks did such a
lot of feeling, I thought I'd better keep my mouth shut."

"Yes, quite!" said Angus. "Everybody had such a lot of feelings on
somebody else's behalf, that nobody ever had time to realise what they
felt themselves. I know I was like that. The feelings all came on to me
from the outside: like flies settling on meat. Before I knew where I
was I was eaten up with a swarm of feelings, and I found myself in the
trenches. God knows what for. And ever since then I've been trying to
get out of my swarm of feelings, which buzz in and out of me and have
nothing to do with me. I realised it in hospital. It's exactly like
trying to get out of a swarm of nasty dirty flies. And every one you
kill makes you sick, but doesn't make the swarm any less."

Again Angus pursed and bridled and looked like a pleased, wicked white
owl. Then he polished his monocle on a very choice silk handkerchief,
and fixed it unseeing in his left eye.

But Francis was not interested in his friend's experiences. For Francis
had had a job in the War Office--whereas Angus was a war-hero with
shattered nerves. And let him depreciate his own experie