es of doubt and questioning, but he had left his wife and
children safe and secure in the self-satisfaction of orthodoxy. To none
of them except to Eleanor had he ever talked with any freedom of his
new apprehensions of religious reality. And that had been at Eleanor's
initiative. There was, he saw now, something of insolence and something
of treachery in this concealment. His ruling disposition throughout the
crisis had been to force comfort and worldly well-being upon all those
dependants even at the price of his own spiritual integrity. In no way
had he consulted them upon the bargain.... While we have pottered, each
for the little good of his own family, each for the lessons and clothes
and leisure of his own children, assenting to this injustice, conforming
to that dishonest custom, being myopically benevolent and fundamentally
treacherous, our accumulated folly has achieved this catastrophe. It is
not so much human wickedness as human weakness that has permitted the
youth of the world to go through this hell of blood and mud and fire.
The way to the kingdom of God is the only way to the true safety, the
true wellbeing of the children of men....

It wasn't fair to them. But now he saw how unfair it was to them in a
light that has only shone plainly upon European life since the great
interlude of the armed peace came to an end in August, 1914. Until
that time it had been the fashion to ignore death and evade poverty and
necessity for the young. We can shield our young no longer, death has
broken through our precautions and tender evasions--and his eyes went
eastward into the twilight that had swallowed up his daughter and her
lover.

The tumbled darkling sky, monstrous masses of frowning blue, with icy
gaps of cold light, was like the great confusions of the war. All our
youth has had to go into that terrible and destructive chaos--because of
the kings and churches and nationalities sturdier-souled men would have
set aside.

Everything was sharp and clear in his mind now. Eleanor after all had
brought him his solution.

He sat quite still for a little while, and then stood up and turned
northward towards Notting Hill.

The keepers were closing Kensington Gardens, and he would have to skirt
the Park to Victoria Gate and go home by the Bayswater Road....

(14)

As he walked he rearranged in his mind this long-overdue apology for his
faith that he was presently to make to his family. There was no one to
inte