d not
taken her children to the seaside. Rather to the amusement of his
neighbours, Mr. Robey, who was moving heaven and earth to get some kind
of War Office job, had bluntly declared that, however much people might
believe in "business as usual," he was not going to practice "pleasure
as usual" while his country was at war.

Mrs. Otway stepped out of her gate, and before turning to the right she
looked to the left, as people will. The Dean was at the corner,
apparently on his way back from the town. He held an open paper in his
hand, and though that was not in itself a strange thing, there suddenly
came over the woman who stood looking at him a curious feeling of
unreasoning fear, a queer prevision of evil. She began walking towards
him, and he, after hesitating for a moment, came forward to meet her.

"There's serious news!" he cried. "Namur has fallen!"

Now, only that morning Mrs. Otway had read in a leading article the
words, "Namur is impregnable, or, if not impregnable, will certainly
hold out for months. That this is so is fortunate, for we cannot
disguise from ourselves that Namur is the key to France."

"Are you sure that the news is true?" she asked quietly, and, disturbed
as he was himself, the Dean was surprised to see the change which had
come over his neighbour's face; it suddenly looked aged and grey.

"Yes, I'm afraid it's true--in fact, it's official. Still, I don't know
that the falling of a fortress should really affect our Expeditionary
Force."

Mary Otway did not pay her proposed call on Mrs. Robey. Instead, she
retraced her steps into the Trellis House, and looked eagerly through
the papers of the last few days. She no longer trusted the Dean and his
easy-going optimism. The fall of Namur without effect on the
Expeditionary Force? As she read on, even she saw that it was bound to
have--perhaps it had already had--an overwhelming effect on the fortunes
of the little British Army.

From that hour onwards a heavy cloud of suspense and of fear hung over
Witanbury Close: over the Deanery, where the cherished youngest
daughter tried in vain to be "brave," and to conceal her miserable state
of suspense from her father and mother; over "Robey's," all of whose
young men were in the Expeditionary Force; and very loweringly over the
Trellis House.

What was now happening over there, in France, or in Flanders? People
asked each other the question with growing uneasiness.

The next day, that is, on