e.

While thinking these thoughts he reached Charing Cross. Already he was
weary with so small an exertion. He halted, debating whether he should
struggle further. Then he became aware of wounded Tommies, chiefly
Overseas troops, Canadians and Australians, who from their first landing
in England had chosen this quarter of a mile as their happy
hunting-ground. They stood propped up against the pavement; they sat
among the pigeons on the parapets of Trafalgar Square. They were
laughing and chaffing, those one-legged, one-armed, derelict crusaders
in their atrocious hospital uniforms. They were thousands of miles from
their one and only woman; but their drawn faces grinned cheerfully and
their jaws were squared in the old, invincible, obstinate determination
never to admit they were down-hearted. The sight of them filled him with
strength. Though he saw them only fugitively through gaps in the tide of
traffic, he felt their companionship. He would always feel it--the fine,
shared courage of men out of sight, who had adventured for an ideal as
his companions.

He crossed the top of Whitehall, passed beneath the Admiralty Arch and
entered the garnished, graveled, tree-bordered spaciousness of the Mall.
His old sense returned--the confidence which the Mall always gave to
him--of Empire and world-wideness. As he strolled along, he noticed a
board which informed the public that, by following a certain path, one
would arrive at the Passport Office. Hidden in the greenness, set down
in the bed of an ornamental lake which had been drained when the terror
of air raids had threatened, he made out a low-built, sprawling shed. It
was like a glimpse of romance. The path which led to its doorway was the
first few hundred yards along the road that ran to Rio, Fiji and Tibet.
One had but to enter and the journey was commenced. The sight reminded
him of something which he had forgotten; that, though every other
delight failed, he still possessed the wideness of the world. He could
sail away. There were islands of the sea--Stevenson's Samoa, Conrad's
Malay Archipelago. If people proved disappointing, there were always the
painted solitudes which human disillusions had not withered and could
not defile. It was a loophole worth remembering.

Outside Buckingham Palace he made an unpremeditated surrender. A taxi
was prowling along by the curb as slowly as regulations allowed. He
raised his stick automatically as he caught the driver's eye. Wh