but the quacking of rumour,
report after report, each contradicting the other.

Then suddenly came certainty, a rainbow set in the intolerable cloud. On
Monday afternoon, when the House of Commons met, all parties were known
to have sunk their private differences and to be agreed on one point
that should take precedence of all other questions. Germany should not,
with England's consent, violate the neutrality of Belgium. As far as
England was concerned, all negotiations were at an end, diplomacy had
said its last word, and Germany was given twenty-four hours in which to
reply. Should a satisfactory answer not be forthcoming, England would
uphold the neutrality she with others had sworn to respect by force
of arms. And at that one immense sigh of relief went up from the whole
country. Whatever now might happen, in whatever horrors of long-drawn
and bloody war the nation might be involved, the nightmare of possible
neutrality, of England's repudiating the debt of honour, was removed.
The one thing worse than war need no longer be dreaded, and for the
moment the future, hideous and heart-rending though it would surely be,
smiled like a land of promise.

Michael woke on the morning of Tuesday, the fourth of August, with the
feeling of something having suddenly roused him, and in a few seconds he
knew that this was so, for the telephone bell in the room next door sent
out another summons. He got straight out of bed and went to it, with a
hundred vague shadows of expectation crossing his mind. Then he learned
that his mother was gravely ill, and that he was wanted at once. And in
less than half an hour he was on his way, driving swiftly through the
serene warmth of the early morning to the private asylum where she had
been removed after her sudden homicidal outburst in March.

CHAPTER XIV

Michael was sitting that same afternoon by his mother's bedside. He
had learned the little there was to be told him on his arrival in the
morning; how that half an hour before he had been summoned, she had had
an attack of heart failure, and since then, after recovering from the
acute and immediate danger, she had lain there all day with closed eyes
in a state of but semi-conscious exhaustion. Once or twice only, and
that but for a moment she had shown signs of increasing vitality, and
then sank back into this stupor again. But in those rare short intervals
she had opened her eyes, and had seemed to see and recognise him, and
Mich