evons, of _his_ opinions,
_his_ vision, _his_ horror and excitement. I seem to have spent the
greater part of those three days with Jevons, and there are moments, in
looking back, when he fills the scene. He is the largest and most
prominent figure in the crowd that walked the streets with me on the
evening of the Ultimatum, that waited with me outside Buckingham Palace,
when London let itself loose in madness; he seems the only sane figure in
that crowd or in the processions that moved for hours on end up and down
Parliament Street, between Trafalgar Square and Palace Yard. It is as if
I had stood alone with Jevons before the Mansion House at midnight when
the Ultimatum was declared.

And when I say that it was his horror and anxiety and excitement--and his
defiance and exaltation, if you like--that I felt, I do not mean that
Jevons talked about it. He was, for those three days, mostly silent. It
is that I saw him consumed and burned up by the fever of patriotism and
war, and that beside his passion any emotion I may have felt hardly
counted.

And every minute we expected to hear him say that he _liked_ the War
because it made him feel manly. Norah and I pretended to each other that
he would say it--it was our idea of a joke, God forgive us.

It was on Wednesday, the fifth, very early in the morning, that he began
trying to enlist. It was the first thing he did; and we thought _that_
funny.

We thought it so funny that even if he hadn't told us not to tell Viola
we wouldn't have told her; we felt that it wouldn't have been quite fair
to either of them.

And none of the Thesigers, or anybody connected with the Thesigers, could
take Jimmy seriously for one moment. With General Thesiger waiting to be
sent to the Front, and Reggie Thesiger preparing to go, and Charlie
Thesiger who might be called on any day, with Bertie and all his male
cousins enlisting and pulling all the ropes they could lay their hands on
to get their commissions, they hadn't time for Jimmy and his importunity.
He _was_ importunate; and I'm afraid that in those weeks Jimmy didn't
exist for them or any of us, except as a jest that lightened our labours
now and then. They were so busy getting their kits that they couldn't
even think of the fate of Europe.

And Viola--what she was thinking and feeling God (or Jevons) only knew.
She didn't tell us. But I was pretty sure that with Reggie starting for
the front in two weeks it wasn't Jevons she was th