have been decreed unto their
wings. They had met together in the firmament like a flock of giant
magpies crossing and re-crossing each others' flight. The smell of rain
was in the air. The car raised no dust, but bored swiftly on, searching
out the road with its lamps. On Putney Bridge its march was stayed by
a string of waggons. Lord Valleys looked to right and left. The river
reflected the thousand lights of buildings piled along her sides, lamps
of the embankments, lanterns of moored barges. The sinuous pallid body
of this great Creature, for ever gliding down to the sea, roused in his
mind no symbolic image. He had had to do with her, years back, at the
Board of Trade, and knew her for what she was, extremely dirty, and
getting abominably thin just where he would have liked her plump. Yet,
as he lighted a cigar, there came to him a queer feeling--as if he were
in the presence of a woman he was fond of.

"I hope to God," he thought, "nothing'll come of these scares!" The
car glided on into the long road, swarming with traffic, towards the
fashionable heart of London. Outside stationers' shops, however, the
posters of evening papers were of no reassuring order.

'THE PLOT THICKENS.'
'MORE REVELATIONS.'
'GRAVE SITUATION THREATENED.'

And before each poster could be seen a little eddy in the stream of
the passers-by--formed by persons glancing at the news, and disengaging
themselves, to press on again. The Earl of Valleys caught himself
wondering what they thought of it! What was passing behind those pale
rounds of flesh turned towards the posters?

Did they think at all, these men and women in the street? What was their
attitude towards this vaguely threatened cataclysm? Face after face,
stolid and apathetic, expressed nothing, no active desire, certainly no
enthusiasm, hardly any dread. Poor devils! The thing, after all, was no
more within their control than it was within the power of ants to stop
the ruination of their ant-heap by some passing boy! It was no doubt
quite true, that the people had never had much voice in the making of
war. And the words of a Radical weekly, which as an impartial man he
always forced himself to read, recurred to him. "Ignorant of the facts,
hypnotized by the words 'Country' and 'Patriotism'; in the grip of
mob-instinct and inborn prejudice against the foreigner; helpless by
reason of his patience, stoicism, good faith, and con