‘I forget everything except that I won’t leave you. Hugh, would you really send me away?’ she asked, trying to laugh. ‘Who’d mend your clothes, and wash the dishes, and tell you where to find things? Oh! oh! my heart will break.’ She wept and sobbed in my arms.

‘Hush, hush, my love,’ I besought her. ‘Don’t you understand? I’d be a fugitive, hiding from all the world in the roughest hills, listening for footsteps in every wind, starting at my shadow—’

She shook her head violently.

‘I can hide too, and skulk in the rocks,’ she said. ‘I’m not afraid of anything except losing you …

‘I’m all right now, Hugh,’ she went on. ‘I’m sorry—for a minute the world was dark, no light in all the earth, nothing but dark, dark, fearful dark. We must be calm! We must make plans, and be ready. Could we really live in that cave, Hugh?’

‘It would be rough—’ I began.

‘Who cares for roughness!’ she returned angrily. ‘I’m not so weak that I must be nursed, Hugh, and kept from hearing the truth, like a fool or a child.’

‘I’m sorry, Terry,’ I said humbly. ‘Other people have lived in caves, hermits and robbers and fugitives from tyrants—what fools we’ll feel if there’s no need to go.’

‘What does it matter, then? You know as well as I do that war is coming.’

‘You don’t believe that I’m a coward?’ I asked anxiously.

‘I don’t think so, Hugh,’ she replied with a pale smile.

‘To be killed is nothing so dreadful,’ I went on, ‘if a man can see a just cause for dying. I think I could suffer pain—mutilation—’

‘For God’s sake stop!’ she cried in a shrill voice. Her eyes were wild and her face was haggard.

‘It’s this madness, this war, it kills and kills, and when the killing’s done, all that it accomplishes is to set the stage for more.’ I could not stop. I could not cease from speaking and tormenting myself with horror.

‘How much money have we?’ she asked with an effort to control her speech.

I looked at my pass-book.

‘Fifty-three pounds,’ I said.

‘I don’t think we should let our minds prey on things,’ she said. She drew a deep breath. The colour returned to her cheeks. ‘We believe that we are doing right. We aren’t willing to be mocked and ill-used and made the butt of fools and ruffians for doing right. Isn’t it simple?’

‘We should be willing—’ I said.

‘Yes.’

‘We must arrange, we must think out the smallest details,’ she continued. ‘We have fifty-three pounds to spend.’

‘I’ll buy as much ammunition for the .22 as my permit will let me have,’ I declared. ‘It won’t be wasted at any rate, even if we stay at home.’

‘Stay at home!’ she broke in. ‘We’ll be leaving our house! Hugh, I never thought of that! we were happy in it.’