l the big towns rolled
together. Pipes would come out and men would draw together in the
smoking-room--while in imagination the green flares would go hissing up
again, silhouetted against the velvet of the night. But for the most
part the war had ceased to count; tennis and golf, with a visit now and
then to London, filled the days.

Vane's arm prevented him playing any game, but the country around was
admirably suited for walking, and most afternoons he found himself
strolling out past the lodge gates for a ramble. Sometimes one of the
other officers accompanied him; but more often he went alone. And on
those long lonely walks he found himself obeying Margaret's
injunctions, given to him at Paris Plage--"Go and find out. . . ."

In common with many others who were beginning, almost unconsciously, to
think for the first time, he found considerable difficulty in knowing
where to start the quest. Vane was no fool, but in days gone by he had
accepted a certain order of things as being the only possible
order--just as England had been the only possible country. But now it
seemed to him that if England was to remain the only possible country
an alteration would have to be made in the order. Before, any danger
to her supremacy had come from without--now the trouble lay within.

Each day, alongside the war news, he read of strikes and rumours of
strikes, and when he came to ask himself the reason why, he was
appalled at his own ignorance. Something was wrong somewhere;
something which would have to be put right. And the trouble was that
it did not seem a matter of great ease to put it right. He felt that
the glib phrases about Capital and Labour pulling together, about
better relations between employers and men, about standing shoulder to
shoulder, failed to hit the point. They were rather like offering a
hungry lion a halfpenny bun. They could always be relied on to raise a
cheer from a political platform provided the right audience was
present; but it seemed doubtful whether even such a far-reaching result
as that was quite enough.

At times his natural indolence made him laugh inwardly. "What on earth
is the use?" he would mutter, throwing pebbles into the pond below him.
"What has to be--has to be." It was a favourite haunt of his--that
pond; in the heart of a wood, with a little waterfall trickling over
some rounded stones and falling musically into the pond a few feet
below. The afternoon sun used to s