ion if we don't. We--we shall be damned if we
don't, damned for ever and ever. It's moral extinction not to."

She kindled at that.

"Yes, I know," she said, "that's what I have been telling myself; but,
oh, Mike, there's some dreadful cowardly part of me that won't listen
when I think of Hermann, and . . ."

She broke off a moment.

"Michael," she said, "what will you do, if there is war?"

He took up her hand that lay on the arm of his chair.

"My darling, how can you ask?" he said. "Of course I shall go back to
the army."

For one moment she gave way.

"No, no," she said. "You mustn't do that."

And then suddenly she stopped.

"My dear, I ask your pardon," she said. "Of course you will. I know
that really. It's only this stupid cowardly part of me that--that
interrupted. I am ashamed of it. I'm not as bad as that all through.
I don't make excuses for myself, but, ah, Mike, when I think of what
Germany is to me, and what Hermann is, and when I think what England is
to me, and what you are! It shan't appear again, or if it does, you
will make allowance, won't you? At least I can agree with you utterly,
utterly. It's the flesh that's weak, or, rather, that is so strong. But
I've got it under."

She sat there in silence a little, mopping her eyes.

"How I hate girls who cry!" she said. "It is so dreadfully feeble! Look,
Mike, there are some roses on that tree from which I plucked the one you
didn't think much of. Do you remember? You crushed it up in my hand and
made it bleed."

He smiled.

"I have got some faint recollection of it," he said.

Sylvia had got hold of her courage again.

"Have you?" she asked. "What a wonderful memory. And that quiet evening
out here next day. Perhaps you remember that too. That was real: that
was a possession that we shan't ever part with."

She pointed with her finger.

"You and I sat there, and Hermann there," she said. "And mother
sat--why, there she is. Mother darling, let's have tea out here, shall
we? I will go and tell them."

Mrs. Falbe had drifted out in her usual thistledown style, and shook
hands with Michael.

"What an upset it all is," she said, "with all these dreadful rumours
going about that we shall be at war. I fell asleep, I think, a little
after lunch, when I could not attend to my book for thinking about war."

"Isn't the book interesting?" asked Michael.

"No, not very. It is rather painful. I do not know why people write
about painful t