, vividly aware of one another, only concerned
with one another. Then the door would open again, messengers would
enter, or a sharp bell would stab their quiet privacy, and it was like
a window in a well built brightly lit house flung open suddenly to a
hurricane. The dark hurry and tumult, the stress and vehemence of the
battle rushed in and overwhelmed them. They were no longer persons
but mere spectators, mere impressions of a tremendous convulsion.
They became unreal even to themselves, miniatures of personality,
indescribably small, and the two antagonistic realities, the only
realities in being were first the city, that throbbed and roared yonder
in a belated frenzy of defence and secondly the aeroplanes hurling
inexorably towards them over the round shoulder of the world.

At first their mood had been one of exalted confidence, a great pride
had possessed them, a pride in one another for the greatness of the
issues they had challenged. At first he had walked the room eloquent
with a transitory persuasion of his tremendous destiny. But slowly
uneasy intimations of their coming defeat touched his spirit. There came
a long period in which they were alone. He changed his theme, became
egotistical, spoke of the wonder of his sleep, of the little life of his
memories, remote yet minute and clear, like something seen through an
inverted opera-glass, and all the brief play of desires and errors that
had made his former life. She said little, but the emotion in her face
followed the tones in his voice, and it seemed to him he had at last a
perfect understanding. He reverted from pure reminiscence to that sense
of greatness she imposed upon him. "And through it all, this destiny was
before me," he said; "this vast inheritance of which I did not dream."

Insensibly their heroic preoccupation with the revolutionary struggle
passed to the question of their relationship. He began to question
her. She told him of the days before his awakening, spoke with a brief
vividness of the girlish dreams that had given a bias to her life, of
the incredulous emotions his awakening had aroused. She told him too
of a tragic circumstance of her girlhood that had darkened her life,
quickened her sense of injustice and opened her heart prematurely to
the wider sorrows of the world. For a little time, so far as he
was concerned, the great war about them was but the vast ennobling
background to these personal things.

In an instant these person