sible enough
explanation . . . yes . . . I shouldn't wonder. But from whom is she
hiding?"

"Possibly from her husband."

"Her--her----"

"Like as not. Don't murder me. I think you'd better go to Florida and
stay there. Better still, marry Anne Goodrich and take her along----"

Clavering had flung himself out of the room.

XVII

He charged down Madison Avenue, barely escaping disaster at the
crossings in the frightful congestion of the hour: he was not only
intensely perturbed in mind, but he was in a hurry. His column was
unfinished and an article on the "authentic drama" for one of the
literary reviews must be delivered on the morrow. In the normal course
of events it would have been written a week since.

He was furious with himself. Passionate, impulsive, and often
unreasonable, his mind was singularly well-balanced and never before
had it succumbed to obsession. He had taken the war as a normal
episode in the history of a world dealing mainly in war; not as a
strictly personal experience designed by a malignant fate to deprive
youth of its illusions, embitter and deidealize it, fill it with a cold
and acrid contempt for militarism and governments, convert it to
pacificism, and launch it on a confused but strident groping after
Truth. It was incredible to him that any one who had read history
could be guilty of such jejunity, and he attributed it to their bruised
but itching egos. After all, it had been a middle-aged man's war. Not
a single military reputation had been made by any one of the millions
of young fighters, despite promotions, citations, and medals.
Statesmen and military men long past their youth would alone be
mentioned in history.

The youth of America was individualism rampant plus the national
self-esteem, and the mass of them today had no family traditions behind
them--sprung from God knew what. Their ego had been slapped in the
face and compressed into a mould; they were subconsciously trying to
rebuild it to its original proportions by feeling older than their
fathers and showering their awful contempt upon those ancient and
despicable loadstones: "loyalty" and "patriotism." Writers who had
remained safely at home had taken the cue and become mildly pacifist.
It sounded intellectual and it certainly was the fashion.

Clavering, whose ancestors had fought in every war in American history,
had enlisted in 1917 with neither sentimentalism, enthusiasm, nor
resentment.