te present.

He met by the river two men, sleek people in silk hats, with plump
hands--hands which looked as if they were carefully fed on very
nutritious food every day by their owners--warmly covered. As they
passed him one of those know-alls said to the other:

"Oh, it'll only be a potty little war. What can a handful of peasants do
against our men? I'll lay you five to one in sovereigns two months will
see it out."

"I dare say you will," returned the other, in a voice that was surely
smiling, "but I won't take you."

"By Jove, what a plunger I am!" thought Dion. "Racing ahead like a horse
that's lost his wits. Ten to one they'll never want volunteers."

But Westminster still looked exceptional, full of the inner meaning, and
somewhere within him a voice still said, "You will go." Nevertheless he
was able partly to put off his hybrid feeling, half-dread, half-desire.
The sleek people in the silk hats had made their little effect on the
stranger. "The man in the street is often right," Dion said to himself;
though he knew that the man in the street is probably there, and remains
there, because he is so often wrong.

When he reached Little Market Street Dion told Rosamund there would
be war in South Africa, but he did not even hint at his thought that
volunteers might be called for, at his intention, if they were, to offer
himself. To do that would not only be absurdly premature, but might
even seem slightly bombastic, an uncalled-for study in heroics. He kept
silence. The battles of Ladysmith, of Magersfontein, of Stormberg, of
Colenso, unsettled the theories of sleek people in silk hats. England
came to a very dark hour when Robin was playing with a new set of bricks
which his Aunt Beattie had given him. Dion began to understand the
rightness of his instinct that evening by the river, when Westminster
had spoken to him and England had whispered in his blood. As he had
thought of things, so they were going to be. The test was very great. It
was as if already it stood by him, a living entity, and touched him
with an imperious hand. Sometimes he looked at Rosamund and saw great
stretches of sea rolling under great stretches of sky. The barrier! How
would he be able to bear the long separation from Rosamund? The habit of
happiness in certain circumstances can become the scourge of a man. Men
who were unhappy at home could go to war with a lighter heart than he.

Just before Christmas the call for men came, and in