“I think we shall go to war,” he said. “I don’t see personally how we can exist any more as a nation if we don’t. We--we shall be damned if we don’t, damned for ever and ever. It’s moral extinction not to.”
“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 . . .”
“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.”
“No, no,” she said. “You mustn’t do that.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”