ne, an endless supply, with none of the namby-pambiness and
the sloppiness and the blowziness of their forerunners. Walking in
Piccadilly or Bond Street or the Park, you might nowadays fancy yourself
in Paris ... Why indeed should he not be playing tennis at that hour?
The month was August. The apparatus of pleasure was there. Used or
unused, it would still be there. It could not be destroyed simply
because the times were grave. And there was his health; he would work
better after the exercise. What purpose could there be in mournful
inactivity? Yet continuously, as he ran about the court, and smiled at
Gladys, and called out the score, and exclaimed upon his failures in
precision, the strange, physical weight oppressed his stomach. He
supposed that nearly everybody carried that physical weight. But did Sir
Isaac? Did the delicious Gladys? The youth on the other side of the net
was in the highest spirits because in a few days he would be entering
Sandhurst.

A butler appeared from the French window of the ground floor of the
M.P.'s house, walked down the curving path screened by a pergola, and
came near the court with a small white paper in his solemn hand. At a
suitable moment he gave the paper to the young master, who glanced at it
and stuffed it into his pocket; the butler departed. A few minutes later
the players changed courts. While the girls chatted apart, the youth
leaped over the net, and, drawing the paper from his pocket, showed it
furtively to George. It bore the words:

"Namur has fallen."

The M.P.'s household received special news by telephone from a friend at
the War Office.

The youth raised his eyebrows, and with a side-glance seemed to say that
there could be no object in telling the women immediately. The next
instant the game was resumed with full ardour.

George missed his strokes. Like thousands of other people, untaught by
the episode of Liege, he had counted upon Namur. Namur, the bastion, the
shoulder of the newly forming line, if not impregnable, was expected to
hold out for many days. And it had tumbled like a tin church, and with
it the brave edifice of his confidence. He saw the Germans inevitably in
Paris, blowing up Paris quarter by quarter, arrondissement by
arrondissement, imposing peace, dictating peace, forcing upon Europe
unspeakable humiliations. He saw Great Britain compelled to bow; and he
saw worse than that. And the German officer, having struck across the
face with his ca