scription of romance and honour and even religion about
war. She was very confused.

Skrebensky was busy, he could not come to see her. She asked
for no assurance, no security. What was between them, was, and
could not be altered by avowals. She knew that by instinct, she
trusted to the intrinsic reality.

But she felt an agony of helplessness. She could do nothing.
Vaguely she knew the huge powers of the world rolling and
crashing together, darkly, clumsily, stupidly, yet colossal, so
that one was brushed along almost as dust. Helpless, helpless,
swirling like dust! Yet she wanted so hard to rebel, to rage, to
fight. But with what?

Could she with her hands fight the face of the earth, beat
the hills in their places? Yet her breast wanted to fight, to
fight the whole world. And these two small hands were all she
had to do it with.

The months went by, and it was Christmas--the snowdrops
came. There was a little hollow in the wood near Cossethay,
where snowdrops grew wild. She sent him some in a box, and he
wrote her a quick little note of thanks--very grateful and
wistful he seemed. Her eyes grew childlike and puzzled. Puzzled
from day to day she went on, helpless, carried along by all that
must happen.

He went about at his duties, giving himself up to them. At
the bottom of his heart his self, the soul that aspired and had
true hope of self-effectuation lay as dead, still-born, a dead
weight in his womb. Who was he, to hold important his personal
connection? What did a man matter personally? He was just a
brick in the whole great social fabric, the nation, the modern
humanity. His personal movements were small, and entirely
subsidiary. The whole form must be ensured, not ruptured, for
any personal reason whatsoever, since no personal reason could
justify such a breaking. What did personal intimacy matter? One
had to fill one's place in the whole, the great scheme of man's
elaborate civilization, that was all. The Whole
mattered--but the unit, the person, had no importance,
except as he represented the Whole.

So Skrebensky left the girl out and went his way, serving
what he had to serve, and enduring what he had to endure,
without remark. To his own intrinsic life, he was dead. And he
could not rise again from the dead. His soul lay in the tomb.
His life lay in the established order of things. He had his five
senses too. They were to be gratified. Apart from this, he
represented the great, established, ex