shall
mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they
shall walk and not faint."

And their last hour came back to her with its mysterious, sweet and
powerful passion that had no fear in it; and she laid hold again on the
Reality they had seen and felt together.

The moment passed. She wanted it to come back, for as long as it lasted
she was at peace.

But it did not come back. Nothing came back but her anguish of remorse
for all that she had wasted.

XXI

After Drayton's death Frances and Anthony were sobered and had ceased to
feed on illusions. The Battle of the Marne was fought in vain for them.
They did not believe that it had saved Paris.

Then came the fall of Antwerp and the Great Retreat. There was no more
Belgium. The fall of Paris and the taking of Calais were only a question
of time, of perhaps a very little time. Then there would be no more
France. They were face to face with the further possibility of there
being no more England.

In those months of September and October Anthony and Frances were
changed utterly to themselves and to each other. If, before the War,
Frances had been asked whether she loved England, she would, after
careful consideration, have replied truthfully, "I like England. But I
dislike the English people. They are narrow and hypocritical and
conceited. They are snobbish; and I hate snobs." At the time of the Boer
War, beyond thinking that the British ought to win, and that they would
win, and feeling a little spurt as of personal satisfaction when they
did win, she had had no consciousness of her country whatsoever. As for
loving it, she loved her children and her husband, and she had a sort of
mild, cat-like affection for her garden and her tree of Heaven and her
house; but the idea of loving England was absurd; you might just as well
talk of loving the Archbishopric of Canterbury. She who once sat in
peace under the tree of Heaven with her _Times_ newspaper, and flicked
the affairs of the nation from her as less important than the stitching
on her baby's frock, now talked and thought and dreamed of nothing else.
She was sad, not because her son Nicholas's time of safety was dwindling
week by week, but because England was in danger; she was worried, not
because Lord Kitchener was practically asking her to give up her son
Michael, but because she had found that the race was to the swift and
the battle to the strong, and that she was classed with her inc