like the disquisition of a debating society.

He was distressed by a fancy of an old German couple, spectacled and
peering, puzzled by his letter. Perhaps they would be obscurely hurt by
his perplexing generalisations. Why, they would ask, should this
Englishman preach to them?

He sat back in his chair wearily, with his chin sunk upon his chest. For
a time he did not think, and then, he read again the sentence in front
of his eyes.

_"These boys, these hopes, this war has killed."_

The words hung for a time in his mind.

"No!" said Mr. Britling stoutly. "They live!"

And suddenly it was borne in upon his mind that he was not alone. There
were thousands and tens of thousands of men and women like himself,
desiring with all their hearts to say, as he desired to say, the
reconciling word. It was not only his hand that thrust against the
obstacles.... Frenchmen and Russians sat in the same stillness, facing
the same perplexities; there were Germans seeking a way through to him.
Even as he sat and wrote. And for the first time clearly he felt a
Presence of which he had thought very many times in the last few weeks,
a Presence so close to him that it was behind his eyes and in his brain
and hands. It was no trick of his vision; it was a feeling of immediate
reality. And it was Hugh, Hugh that he had thought was dead, it was
young Heinrich living also, it was himself, it was those others that
sought, it was all these and it was more, it was the Master, the Captain
of Mankind, it was God, there present with him, and he knew that it was
God. It was as if he had been groping all this time in the darkness,
thinking himself alone amidst rocks and pitfalls and pitiless things,
and suddenly a hand, a firm strong hand, had touched his own. And a
voice within him bade him be of good courage. There was no magic
trickery in that moment; he was still weak and weary, a discouraged
rhetorician, a good intention ill-equipped; but he was no longer lonely
and wretched, no longer in the same world with despair. God was beside
him and within him and about him.... It was the crucial moment of Mr.
Britling's life. It was a thing as light as the passing of a cloud on an
April morning; it was a thing as great as the first day of creation. For
some moments he still sat back with his chin upon his chest and his
hands dropping from the arms of his chair. Then he sat up and drew a
deep breath....

This had come almost as a matter of cours