he remembered that he had made a
kind of appointment with himself at Pyecrafts. He stared at two
conflicting purposes. He turned over certain possibilities.

At the Market Saffron cross-roads he slowed down, and for a moment he
hung undecided.

"Oliver," he said, and as he spoke he threw over his steering-wheel
towards the homeward way.... He finished his sentence when he had
negotiated the corner safely. "Oliver must have her...."

And then, perhaps fifty yards farther along, and this time almost
indignantly: "She ought to have married him long ago...."

He put his automobile in the garage, and then went round under the black
shadow of his cedars to the front door. He had no key, and for a long
time he failed to rouse his wife by flinging pebbles and gravel at her
half-open window. But at last he heard her stirring and called out to
her.

He explained he had returned because he wanted to write. He wanted
indeed to write quite urgently. He went straight up to his room, lit his
reading-lamp, made himself some tea, and changed into his nocturnal
suit. Daylight found him still writing very earnestly at his pamphlet.
The title he had chosen was: "And Now War Ends."

Section 15

In this fashion it was that the great war began in Europe and came to
one man in Matching's Easy, as it came to countless intelligent men in
countless pleasant homes that had scarcely heeded its coming through all
the years of its relentless preparation. The familiar scenery of life
was drawn aside, and War stood unveiled. "I am the Fact," said War, "and
I stand astride the path of life. I am the threat of death and
extinction that has always walked beside life, since life began. There
can be nothing else and nothing more in human life until you have
reckoned with me."

BOOK II

MATCHING'S EASY AT WAR

CHAPTER THE FIRST

ONLOOKERS

Section 1

On that eventful night of the first shots and the first deaths Mr.
Britling did not sleep until daylight had come. He sat writing at this
pamphlet of his, which was to hail the last explosion and the ending of
war. For a couple of hours he wrote with energy, and then his energy
flagged. There came intervals when he sat still and did not write. He
yawned and yawned again and rubbed his eyes. The day had come and the
birds were noisy when he undressed slowly, dropping his clothes anyhow
upon the floor, and got into bed....

He woke to find his morning tea beside him and the