“You think it would prove a useful alliance?” she suggested. “I’ll tell you who makes all the wars,” he said. “It’s you and me, my dears: we make the wars. We love them. That’s why we open our mouths and swallow all the twaddle that the papers give us; and cheer the fine, black-coated gentlemen when they tell us it’s our sacred duty to kill Germans, or Italians, or Russians, or anybody else. We are just crazy to kill something: it doesn’t matter what. If it’s to be Germans, we shout ‘A Berlin!’; and if it’s to be Russians we cheer for Liberty. I was in Paris at the time of the Fashoda trouble. How we hissed the English in the cafés! And how they glared back at us! They were just as eager to kill us. Who makes a dog fight? Why, the dog. Anybody can do it. Who could make us fight each other, if we didn’t want to? Not all the king’s horses and all the King’s men. No, my dears, it’s we make the wars. You and me, my dears.”!

It ended in Joan’s promising to introduce her to discreet theatrical friends who would tell her of cosmetics less injurious to the skin, and advise her generally in the ancient and proper art of “making up.” “No,” he answered. “Not that sort of sleep.” She could not see his face. But she guessed his meaning.

The speaker sat a little way apart. The light from the oil lamp, suspended from the ceiling, fell upon his face. He wore a peasant’s blouse. It seemed to her a face she knew. Possibly she had passed him in the village street and had looked at him without remembering. It was his eyes that for long years afterwards still haunted her. She did not notice at the time what language he was speaking. But there were none who did not understand him. “You see, dear,” she went on, her face still turned away, “I thought it all finished. It will be hard for me to go back to him, knowing as I do now that he doesn’t want me. I shall always feel that I am in his way. And Hilda,” she added after a pause, “she will hate me.” “Is it impossible, then, to combine duty and success?” questioned Joan.