ent with them as far as Buckingham Palace. Some impulse to see
the King had come upon the people; they gathered in the square in front
of the Palace, and waited in confident patience for him to appear.

Dick was standing at the far end of the Square, pressed up against the
railings. In front of him stood two women, they were evidently strangers
to each other, yet their excitement had made them friends, and they
stood holding hands. One was a tall, eager-faced girl; Dick could not
see the other woman's face, but from her voice he imagined her to be a
good deal older and rather superior in class to the girl. It was the
younger one's spirit, however, that was infectious.

"Isn't it fine?" she was saying. "Aren't you proud to be English? I feel
as if my heart was going to jump out of my mouth. They are our men," she
went on breathlessly; "it is a most wonderful thought, and of course
they will win through, but a lot of them will die first. Oh, I do hate
the Germans!" Her whole face flushed with passionate resentment.

"One need not hate a nation because one goes to war with it," the other
woman answered. Dick thought her voice sounded very tired.

"Yes, one need," the girl flamed. "We women can't fight, but we can
hate. Perhaps we shouldn't hate so much if we could fight," she added as
a concession.

"I am married to a German," Dick heard the other woman say bitterly. "I
can't hate him."

He saw the girl's quick face of horror and the way she stood away from
her companion, but just at that moment some impulse surged the crowd
forward and he lost sight of them. Yet the memory of the woman's voice
and the words she had said haunted him. War would mean that, then, the
tearing apart of families, the wrecking of home life.

"The King, the King!" the crowd yelled and shouted in a million voices.
"God save the King."

Dick looked up to the Palace windows; a slight, small figure had come
out on to one of the balconies and stood looking down on the faces of
the people. Cheer upon cheer rose to greet him, the multitude rocked and
swayed with their acclamation, then above the general noise came the
sound of measured music, not a band, but just the people singing in
unison:

"God save our gracious King,
Long live our noble King,
God save the King."

The notes rose and swelled and filled the air, the cry of a nation's
heart, the loyalty of a people towards their King.

The sheer emotion of it shook Di