e came a call for volunteers he would be one of the many who would
answer it. The call might not come, of course; the war might be short, a
hole-and-corner affair soon ended. He told himself that, and, as he did
so, he felt sure that the call would come.

He knew he would not hold back; but he knew also that his was not the
eagerness to go of the man assumed by journalists to be the typical
Englishman. He was not mad to plunge into the great game, reckless of
the future and shouting for the fray. He was not one of the "hard-bitten
raw-boned men with keen eyes and ready for anything" beloved of the
journalists, who loom so large in the public eye when "big things are
afoot." On that autumn evening, as he walked homeward, Dion knew the
bunkum that is given out to the world as truth, knew that brave men have
souls undreamed of in newspaper offices. He perceived the figure of
war just then as a figure terribly austere, grim, cold, harsh--a figure
stripped of all pleasant flesh and sweet coloring, of all softness and
warm humanity. It accompanied him like an iron thing which nevertheless
was informed with life. Joy withered beside it, yet it had the power to
make things bloom. Already he knew that as he had not known it before.

In the crowded Strand the voices of the newsvendors were insistently
shrill, raucous, almost fierce. As he heard them he faced tests. Many
things were going to be put to the test in the almost immediate future.
Among them perhaps would be Rosamund's exact feeling for him.

Upon the hill of Drouva they had slept in the same tent, husband and
wife, more than three years ago; in green and remote Elis they had sat
together before the Hermes, hidden away from the world and hearing
the antique voices; in Westminster Robin was theirs; yet this evening,
facing in imagination the tests of war, Dion knew that Rosamund's exact
feeling for him was still a secret from him. If he went to South Africa
that secret must surely be revealed. Rosamund would inevitably find out
then the nature of her feeling for him, how much she cared, and even if
she did not tell him how much she cared he would know, he could not help
knowing.

He knew with a terrible thoroughness this evening how much he cared for
her.

He considered Robin.

Robin was now more than two and a half years old; a personage in a
jersey and minute knickerbockers, full of dancing energy and spirits,
full of vital interest in the smaller problems of lif