eatrical profession, and the match trade
was quite sure that the match tax would put an end to matches, and
some unnamed modest individuals had apparently decided that the travel
tax must and forthwith would be dropped. The story of the evacuation
of Gallipoli had grown old and tedious. Cranks were still vainly
trying to prove to the blunt John Bullishness of the Prime Minister
that the Daylight Saving Bill was not a piece of mere freak
legislation. The whole of the West End and all the inhabitants of
country houses in Britain had discovered a new deity in Australia
and spent all their spare time and lungs in asserting that all other
deities were false and futile; his earthly name was Hughes. Jan Smuts
was fighting in the primeval forests of East Africa. The Germans were
discussing their war aims; and on the Verdun front they had reached
Mort Homme in the usual way, that was, according to the London Press,
by sacrificing more men than any place could possibly be worth; still,
they had reached Mort Homme. And though our losses and the French
losses were everywhere--one might assert, so to speak--negligible,
nevertheless the steadfast band of thinkers and fact-facers who held
a monopoly of true patriotism were extremely anxious to extend the
Military Service Act, so as to rope into the Army every fit male in
the island except themselves.

The pages of _The Times_ grew semi-transparent, and G.J. descried
Concepcion moving mysteriously in a mist behind them. Only then did he
begin effectively to realise her experiences and her achievement and
her ordeal on the distant, romantic Clyde. He said to himself: "I
could never have stood what she has stood." She was a terrific
woman; but because she was such a mixture of the mad-heroic and the
silly-foolish, he rather condescended to her. She lacked what he was
sure he possessed, and what he prized beyond everything--poise. And
had she truly had a nervous breakdown, or was that fancy? Did she
truly despair of herself as a ruined woman, doubly ruined, or was
she acting a part, as much in order to impress herself as in order to
impress others? He thought the country and particularly its Press,
was somewhat like Concepcion as a complex. He condescended to Queenie
also, not bitterly, but with sardonic pity. There she was, unalterable
by any war, instinctively and ruthlessly working out her soul and her
destiny. The country was somewhat like Queenie too. But, of course,
comparison betw