iven a severe distinction at no great cost. On the
walls were a few interesting things, including a couple of his own
perspectives. A neo-impressionist oil-sketch over the mantelpiece, with
blue trees and red fields and a girl whose face was a featureless blob,
imperiously monopolized the attention of the beholder, warning him,
whoever he might be, that the inescapable revolutionary future was now
at hand. The room and everything in it, that entity upon which George
had spent so much trouble, and of which he had been so proud, seemed
futile, pointless, utterly unprofitable.

The winning of the Indian limited competition, coupled with the firm
rumour that Sir Isaac Davids had singled him out for patronage, had
brilliantly renewed George's reputation and the jealousy which proved
its reality. The professional journals had been full of him, and
everybody assured everybody that his ultimate, complete permanent
success had never been in doubt. The fact that the barracks would be the
largest barracks in India indicated to the superstitious, and to George
himself, that destiny intended him always to break records. After the
largest town hall, the largest barracks; and it was said that Sir
Isaac's factory was to be the largest factory! But the outbreak of war
had overthrown all reputations, save the military and the political.
Every value was changed according to a fresh standard, as in a
shipwreck. For a week George had felt an actual physical weight in the
stomach. This weight was his own selfish woe, but it was also the woe of
the entire friendly world. Every architect knew and said that the
profession of architecture would be ruined for years. Then the India
Office woke George up. The attitude of the India Office was overbearing.
It implied that it had been marvellously original and virtuous in
submitting the affair of its barracks to even a limited competition,
when it might just as easily have awarded the job to any architect whom
it happened to know, or whom its wife, cousin, or aunt happened to know,
or whose wife, cousin, or aunt happened to know the India Office--and
further, that George ought therefore to be deeply grateful. It said that
in view of the war the barracks must be erected with the utmost
possible, or rather with quite impossible, dispatch, and that George
would probably have to go to India at once. Simultaneously it daily
modified George's accepted plans for the structure, exactly as though it
was a prof