their fetid bedding, their dried sweat.

Of course he was going through with it; only--this was the thought his
mind turned round and round on in horror at itself--he funked it. He
funked it so badly that he would really rather die than go through with
it. When he was actually killed that would be his second death; months
before it could happen he would have known all about it; he would have
been dead and buried and alive again in hell.

What shocked Michael was his discovering, not that he funked it now,
which was natural, almost permissible, but that he had funked it all the
time. He could see now that, since the War began, he had been struggling
to keep out of it. His mind had fought every suggestion that he should
go in. It had run to cover, like a mad, frightened animal before the
thoughts that hunted it down. Funk, pure funk, had been at the bottom of
all he had said and thought and done since August, nineteen-fourteen;
his attitude to the War, his opinion of the Allies, and of the
Government and of its conduct of the War, all his wretched criticisms
and disparagements--what had they been but the very subterfuges
of funk?

His mother had known it; his father had known it; and Dorothy and John.
It was not conceivable that Nicky did not know it.

That was what had made the horror of the empty space that separated
them.

Lawrence Stephen had certainly known it.

He could not understand his not knowing it himself, not seeing that he
struggled. Yet he must have seen that Nicky's death would end it.
Anyhow, it _was_ ended; if not last night, then this morning when he
posted the letter.

But he was no longer appeased by this certainty of his. He was going out
all right. But merely going out was not enough. What counted was the
state of mind in which you went. Lawrence had said, "Victory--Victory is
a state of mind."

Well--it was a state that came naturally to Nicky, and did not come
naturally to him. It was all very well for Nicky: he had wanted to go.
He had gone out victorious before victory. Michael would go beaten
before defeat.

He thought: "If this is volunteering, give me compulsion." All the same
he was going.

All morning and afternoon, as he walked and walked, his thoughts went
the same round. And in the evening they began again, but on a new track.
He thought: "It's all very well to say I'm going; but how _can_ I go?"
He had Lawrence Stephen's work to do; Lawrence's Life and Letters were
in his