of every other automobile. In twelve hours, out of nowhere, thousands
and thousands of flags sprang magically into being; as if for years
London had been preparing for this day.

And in and out of this crowd the train of automobiles with their flags
dashed up and down the Mall for hours, appearing and disappearing.
Intoxicated youths with inflamed faces, in full evening dress, squatted
on the roofs of taxi-cabs or rode astride on the engines of their cars,
waving flags.

All this movement, drunken, orgiastic, somnambulistic, mysteriously
restless, streamed up and down between two solemn and processional lines
of lights, two solemn and processional lines of trees, lines that
stretched straight from Whitehall to Buckingham Palace in a recurrent
pattern of trees and lamps, dark trees, twilit trees, a lamp and a tree
shining with a metallic unnatural green; and, at the end of the avenue,
gilded gates and a golden-white facade.

The crowd was drifting now towards the Palace. Michael and Dorothea,
Nicholas and Veronica, went with it. In this eternal perambulation they
met people that they knew; Stephen and Vera; Mitchell, Monier-Owen;
Uncle Morrie and his sisters. Anthony, looking rather solemn, drove
past them in his car. It was like impossible, grotesque encounters in
a dream.

Outside the Palace the crowd moved up and down without rest; it drifted
and returned; it circled round and round the fountain. In the open
spaces the intoxicated motor-cars and taxi-cabs darted and tore with the
folly of moths and the fury of destroyers. They stung the air with their
hooting. Flags, intoxicated flags, still hung from their engines. They
came flying drunkenly out of the dark, like a trumpeting swarm of
enormous insects, irresistibly, incessantly drawn to the lights of the
Palace, hypnotized by the golden-white facade.

Suddenly, Michael's soul revolted.

"If this demented herd of swine is a great people going into a great
war, God help us! Beasts--it's not as if _their_ bloated skins were
likely to be punctured."

He called back over his shoulders to the others.

"Let's get out of this. If we don't I shall be sick."

He took Dorothy by her arm and shouldered his way out.

The water had ceased playing in the fountain.

Nicholas and Veronica stood by the fountain. The water in the basin was
green like foul sea-water. The jetsam of the crowd floated there. A
small child leaned over the edge of the basin and fished for Union