...!

But Nona loved him.... But his duty was here.... And he could have taken
her beautiful body into his arms and held her beloved face to his....
But he had said not a word of love to her, only his cry of
"Nona--Nona...." His duty was here.... But what would the years
bring...? But what might have been! What might have been!

VIII

He finished his ride in darkness. The Green, as he passed along it on
the free-wheel run, merged away through gloom into obscurity. Points of
light from the houses showed here and there. The windows of his home had
lamplight through their lattices. The drive was soft with leaves beneath
his feet.

Lamplight, and the yielding undertread and all around walled about with
obscurity. It was new. It had shown thus now for some nights on his
return. But it was the first time he had apprehended it. New. Different.
A commencement. An ending.

He left his bicycle in the roomy porch. He missed Low Jinks with her
customary friendly greeting. It was very lonely, this. He opened the
hall door and entered. Absolute silence. He had grown uncommonly
accustomed to Low Jinks being here.... Absolute silence. It was like
coming into an empty house. And he had got to go on coming into it, and
living in it, and tremendously doing his duty in it.

Like an empty house. He stood perfectly still in the perfect stillness.
Take down: it is beginning. You have struck your tents and are upon the
march.

PART THREE

EFFIE

CHAPTER I

I

But life goes on without the smallest regard for individual
preoccupations. You may take up what attitude you like towards it or,
with the majority, you may take up no attitude towards it but immerse
yourself in the stupendous importance of your own affairs and disclaim
any connection with life. It doesn't matter tuppence to life. The
ostrich, on much the same principle, buries its head in the sand; and
just as forces outside the sand ultimately get the ostrich, so life, all
the time, is massively getting you.

You have to go along with it.

And in October of the following year, October, 1913, life was going
along at a most delirious and thrilling and entirely fascinating speed.
There never was such a delicious and exciting and progressive year as
between October, 1912, and October, 1913.

And it certainly took not the remotest notice of Sabre.

In February, Lord Roberts, at Bristol, opened a provincial campaign for
National Service. The best people--