d
in the dream. Many things had happened in the north, and the
shadow of them was back again between us, and this time it was not
so easily dispelled. I began I know with moody musings. Why, in
spite of all, should I go back, go back for all the rest of my days
to toil and stress, insults and perpetual dissatisfaction, simply
to save hundreds of millions of common people, whom I did not love,
whom too often I could do no other than despise, from the stress
and anguish of war and infinite misrule? And after all I might
fail. They all sought their own narrow ends, and why should not
I--why should not I also live as a man? And out of such thoughts
her voice summoned me, and I lifted my eyes.

"I found myself awake and walking. We had come out above the
Pleasure City, we were near the summit of Monte Solaro and looking
towards the bay. It was the late afternoon and very clear. Far
away to the left Ischia hung in a golden haze between sea and sky,
and Naples was coldly white against the hills, and before us was
Vesuvius with a tall and slender streamer feathering at last
towards the south, and the ruins of Torre dell' Annunziata and
Castellammare glittering and near."

I interrupted suddenly: "You have been to Capri, of course?"

"Only in this dream," he said, "only in this dream. All
across the bay beyond Sorrento were the floating palaces of the
Pleasure City moored and chained. And northward were the broad
floating stages that received the aeroplanes. Aeroplanes fell out
of the sky every afternoon, each bringing its thousands of
pleasure-seekers from the uttermost parts of the earth to Capri and
its delights. All these things, I say, stretched below.

"But we noticed them only incidentally because of an unusual
sight that evening had to show. Five war aeroplanes that had long
slumbered useless in the distant arsenals of the Rhinemouth were
manoeuvring now in the eastward sky. Evesham had astonished the
world by producing them and others, and sending them to circle here
and there. It was the threat material in the great game of bluff
he was playing, and it had taken even me by surprise. He was one
of those incredibly stupid energetic people who seem sent by heaven
to create disasters. His energy to the first glance seemed so
wonderfully like capacity! But he had no imagination, no
invention, only a stupid, vast, driving force of will, and a mad
faith in his stupid idiot 'luck' to pull him through.