nly there was a knocking
at the door and some one went out and found a policeman with a warrant
on the landing. They took off our host's son.... It had to do with a
murder...."

Hugh paused. "It was the Bedford Mansions mystery. I don't suppose you
remember about it or read about it at the time. He'd killed a man.... It
doesn't matter about the particulars anyhow, but what I mean is the
effect. The effect of a comfortable well-lit orderly room and the sense
of harmless people--and then the door opening and the policeman and the
cold draught flowing in. _Murder!_ A girl who seemed to know the people
well explained to me in whispers what was happening. It was like the
opening of a trap-door going down into some pit you have always known
was there, but never really believed in."

"I know," said Mr. Britling. "I know."

"That's just how I feel about this war business. There's no real death
over here. It's laid out and boxed up. And accidents are all padded
about. If one got a toss from a horse here, you'd be in bed and
comfortable in no time.... And there; it's like another planet. It's
outside.... I'm going outside.... Instead of there being no death
anywhere, it is death everywhere, outside there. We shall be using our
utmost wits to kill each other. A kind of reverse to this world."

Mr. Britling nodded.

"I've never seen a dead body yet. In Dower-House land there aren't dead
bodies."

"We've kept things from you--horrid things of that sort."

"I'm not complaining," said Hugh.... "But--Master Hugh--the Master Hugh
you kept things from--will never come back."

He went on quickly as his father raised distressed eyes to him. "I mean
that anyhow _this_ Hugh will never come back. Another one may. But I
shall have been outside, and it will all be different...."

He paused. Never had Mr. Britling been so little disposed to take up the
discourse.

"Like a man," he said, seeking an image and doing no more than imitate
his son's; "who goes out of a busy lighted room through a trap-door into
a blizzard, to mend the roof...."

For some moments neither father nor son said anything more. They had a
queer sense of insurmountable insufficiency. Neither was saying what he
had wanted to say to the other, but it was not clear to them now what
they had to say to one another....

"It's wonderful," said Mr. Britling.

Hugh could only manage: "The world has turned right over...."

"The job has to be done," said Mr. Britling.