legram. Oliver was abroad in Holland, engaged in a much-needed
emotional rest, and she wired to Mr. Britling: "Have wired for Oliver,
he will come to me, do not trouble to answer this."

She was astonished to get no reply for two days. She got no reply for
two days because remarkable things were happening to the telegraph wires
of England just then, and her message, in the hands of a boy scout on a
bicycle, reached Mr. Britling's house only on Monday afternoon. He was
then at Claverings discussing the invasion of Belgium that made
Britain's participation in the war inevitable, and he did not open the
little red-brown envelope until about half-past six. He failed to mark
the date and hours upon it, but he perceived that it was essentially a
challenge. He was expected, he saw, to go over at once with his
renovated Gladys and end this unfortunate clash forever in one striking
and passionate scene. His mind was now so full of the war that he found
this the most colourless and unattractive of obligations. But he felt
bound by the mysterious code of honour of the illicit love affair to
play his part. He postponed his departure until after supper--there was
no reason why he should be afraid of motoring by moonlight if he went
carefully--because Hugh came in with Cissie demanding a game of hockey.
Hockey offered a nervous refreshment, a scampering forgetfulness of the
tremendous disaster of this war he had always believed impossible, that
nothing else could do, and he was very glad indeed of the irruption....

Section 10

For days the broader side of Mr. Britling's mind, as distinguished from
its egotistical edge, had been reflecting more and more vividly and
coherently the spectacle of civilisation casting aside the thousand
dispersed activities of peace, clutching its weapons and setting its
teeth, for a supreme struggle against militarist imperialism. From the
point of view of Matching's Easy that colossal crystallising of
accumulated antagonisms was for a time no more than a confusion of
headlines and a rearrangement of columns in the white windows of the
newspapers through which those who lived in the securities of England
looked out upon the world. It was a display in the sphere of thought and
print immeasurably remote from the real green turf on which one walked,
from the voice and the church-bells of Mr. Dimple that sounded their
ample caresses in one's ears, from the clashing of the stags who were
beginning to knoc