d go on.

And, while he waited for the moment of vision, he continued Stephen's
work on the _Green Review_. Stephen had left it to him when he went out.
Michael tried to be faithful to the tradition he thus inherited; but
gradually Stephen's spirit disappeared from the _Review_ and its place
was taken by the clear, hard, unbreakable thing that was Michael's mind.

And Michael knew that he was beginning to make himself felt.

But Stephen's staff, such as it was, and nearly all his contributors had
gone to the War, one after another, and Michael found himself taking all
their places. He began to feel a strain, which he took to be the strain
of overwork, and he went down to Renton to recover.

That was on the Tuesday that followed Veronica's Sunday.

He thought that down there he would get away from everything that did
him harm: from his father's and mother's eyes; from his sister's proud,
cold face; and from his young brother's smile; and from Veronica's
beauty that saddened him; and from the sense of Nicky's danger that
brooded as a secret obsession over the house. He would fill up the awful
empty space. He thought: "For a whole fortnight I shall get away from
this infernal War."

But he did not get away from it. On every stage of the journey down he
encountered soldiers going to the Front. He walked in the Park at
Darlington between his trains, and wounded soldiers waited for him on
every seat, shuffled towards him round every turning, hobbled after him
on their crutches down every path. Their eyes looked at him with a
shrewd hostility. He saw the young Yorkshire recruits drinking in the
open spaces. Sergeants' eyes caught and measured him, appraising his
physique. Behind and among them he saw Drayton's, and Reveillaud's, and
Stephen's eyes; and young Wadham's eyes, strange and secretive and hard.

* * * * *

At Reyburn Michael's train was switched off to a side platform in the
open. Before he left Darlington, a thin, light rain had begun to fall
from a shred of blown cloud; and at Reyburn the burst mass was coming
down. The place was full of the noise of rain. The drops tapped on the
open platform and hissed as the wind drove them in a running stream.
They drummed loudly on the station roof. But these sounds went out
suddenly, covered by the trampling of feet.

A band of Highlanders with their bagpipes marched into the station. They
lined up solemnly along the open platform with