war-song over and over again, and
everywhere men enlisting, and in the dancing halls they were drilling. The
whole island was a-whirl with rumours; it was said again and again, that
fighting had begun. I had not expected this. I had seen so little of the
life of pleasure that I had failed to reckon with this violence of the
amateurs. And as for me, I was out of it. I was like a man who might have
prevented the firing of a magazine. The time had gone. I was no one; the
vainest stripling with a badge counted for more than I. The crowd jostled
us and bawled in our ears; that accursed song deafened us; a woman
shrieked at my lady because no badge was on her, and we two went back to
our own place again, ruffled and insulted--my lady white and silent, and I
a-quiver with rage. So furious was I, I could have quarrelled with her if
I could have found one shade of accusation in her eyes.

"All my magnificence had gone from me. I walked up and down our rock cell,
and outside was the darkling sea and a light to the southward that flared
and passed and came again.

"'We must get out of this place,' I said over and over. 'I have made my
choice, and I will have no hand in these troubles. I will have nothing of
this war. We have taken our lives out of all these things. This is no
refuge for us. Let us go.'

"And the next day we were already in flight from the war that covered the
world.

"And all the rest was Flight--all the rest was Flight."

He mused darkly.

"How much was there of it?"

He made no answer.

"How many days?"

His face was white and drawn and his hands were clenched. He took no heed
of my curiosity.

I tried to draw him back to his story with questions.

"Where did you go?" I said.

"When?"

"When you left Capri."

"South-west," he said, and glanced at me for a second. "We went in a
boat."

"But I should have thought an aeroplane?"

"They had been seized."

I questioned him no more. Presently I thought he was beginning again. He
broke out in an argumentative monotone:

"But why should it be? If, indeed, this battle, this slaughter and stress,
_is_ life, why have we this craving for pleasure and beauty? If there
_is_ no refuge, if there is no place of peace, and if all our dreams
of quiet places are a folly and a snare, why have we such dreams? Surely
it was no ignoble cravings, no base intentions, had brought us to this; it
was love had isolated us. Love had come to me with her eyes and robed