sant dealings with life, lay dead
somewhere on the sunny plains of France, killed in action by shell
or bullet in the midst of his youth and strength and joy in life, to
gratify the damned dreams of the man who had been the honoured guest
at Ashbridge, and those who had advised and flattered and at the end
perhaps just used him as their dupe. To their insensate greed and
swollen-headed lust for world-power was this hecatomb of sweet and
pleasant lives offered, and in their onward course through the vines
and corn of France they waded through the blood of the slain whose only
crime was that they had dared to oppose the will of Germany, as voiced
by the War Lord. And as milestones along the way they had come were set
the records of their infamy, in rapine and ruthless slaughter of the
innocent. Just at first, as he sat alone in his room, Michael but
contemplated images that seemed to form in his mind without his
volition, and, emotion-numb from the shock, they seemed external to
him. Sometimes he had a vision of Francis lying without mark or wound or
violence on him in some vineyard on the hill-side, with face as quiet
as in sleep turned towards a moonlit sky. Then came another picture, and
Francis was walking across the terrace at Ashbridge with his gun
over his shoulder, towards Lord Ashbridge and the Emperor, who stood
together, just as Michael had seen the three of them when they came
in from the shooting-party. As Francis came near, the Emperor put a
cartridge into his gun and shot him. . . . Yes, that was it: that was
what had happened. The marvellous peacemaker of Europe, the fire-engine
who, as Hermann had said, was ready to put out all conflagrations,
the fatuous mountebank who pretended to be a friend to England, who
conducted his own balderdash which he called music, had changed his role
and shown his black heart and was out to kill.

Wild panoramas like these streamed through Michael's head, as if
projected there by some magic lantern, and while they lasted he was
conscious of no grief at all, but only of a devouring hate for the mad,
lawless butchers who had caused Francis's death, and willingly at that
moment if he could have gone out into the night and killed a German, and
met his death himself in the doing of it, he would have gone to his
doom as to a bridal-bed. But by degrees, as the stress of these unsought
imaginings abated, his thoughts turned to Francis himself again, who,
through all his boyhood and