“I’se tooked them off,” explained Joan. A piece of information that really, all things considered, seemed unnecessary. What was plucking at her sleeve—still holding her?!

They parted at Charing Cross. Joan would write. They agreed it would be better to choose separate days for their visits to Folkestone. “I don’t mean that it’s all their fault,” she continued. “We do all we can to attract them—the way we dress. Who was it said that to every woman every man is a potential lover. We can’t get it out of our minds. It’s there even when we don’t know it. We will never succeed in civilizing Nature.”

“There’s something bigger coming,” he said. “Here everything seems to be going on much the same, but over there you feel it. Something growing silently out of all this blood and mud. I find myself wondering what the men are staring at, but when I look there’s nothing as far as my field-glasses will reach but waste and desolation. And it isn’t only on the faces of our own men. It’s in the eyes of the prisoners too. As if they saw something. A funny ending to the war, if the people began to think.” “Try and find me brainy,” he whispered to her, as soon as Flossie was out of earshot. “Talk to me about China. I’m quite intelligent on China.” Madge did not reply immediately. She was watching the rooks settling down for the night in the elm trees just beyond the window. There seemed to be much need of coming and going, of much cawing.