rough the swinging doors seemed glad to pass beyond
the range of the heroes' patronizing contemplation.

Michael found a pedestal here, and soon idealized the heedless stupidity
of these immortals into a Lacedemonian rigour which seemed to him very
fine. He accepted their unimaginative standards, their coarseness, their
brutality as virtues, and in them he saw the consummation of all that
England should cherish. He successfully destroyed a legend that he was
clever, and though at first he found it difficult to combat the
suspicion of aesthetic proclivities and religious eccentricity, even of
poetic ambitions which overshadowed his first welcome, he was at last
able to get these condoned as a blemish upon an otherwise diverting
personality with a tongue nimble enough to make heroes guffaw. Moreover,
he was a friend of Alan, who with his slim disdain and perfectly stoic
bearing was irreproachable, and since Michael frankly admired his new
friends, and since he imparted just enough fantasy to their stolid
fellowship to lend it a faint distinction, he was very soon allowed to
preserve a flavour of oddity, and became in time arbiter of whatever
elegance they could claim. Michael on his side was most anxious to
conform to every prejudice of the Olympians, esteeming their stolidity
far above his own natural demeanour, envious too of their profoundly
ordinary point of view and their commonplace expression of it.

Upon this assembly descended the news of war with the Transvaal, and for
three months at least Michael shared in the febrile elation and
arrogance and complacent outlook of the average Englishman. The
Olympians recalled from early schooldays the forms of heroes who were
even now gazetted to regiments on their way to the front, and who but a
little while ago had lounged against these very hot-water pipes.
Sandhurst and Woolwich candidates lamented their ill-luck in being born
too young, and consoled themselves with proclaiming that after all the
war was so easy that scarcely were they missing anything at all. Then
came the first low rumble of defeat, the first tremulous breath of
doubt.

Word went round that meetings were being held to stop the war, and
wrathfully the heroes mounted a London Road Car omnibus, snatched the
Union Jack from its socket, and surged into Hammersmith Town Hall to
yell and hoot at the farouche Irishmen and dirty Socialists who were
mouthing their hatred of the war and exulting in the unlucky