‘So many men to kill and kill and die, what makes grief quiet?’ she cried wildly.

‘If I could see, if I could see clearly!’ I cried. ‘I’ve no doubt it’s easy for some folk to believe that war’s wrong. All the instincts I ever got are for trouble, and intellectual persuasion’s cold comfort when it’s against one’s instincts. Oh, Terry, I don’t think I could bear to live in this country, where we know everyone, where we are friendly with every one, if war came, for I’m not going to fight, and there’d be nothing but contempt and mockery for us.’

‘People have changed since the last war,’ she declared without much conviction.

‘Do you believe that?’ I asked. ‘Do you believe that the people who beat and jailed pacifists in the last war will be any kinder in the next?’

‘No,’ she said, and then, ‘Hugh, what are we going to do?’

‘If only I could see—’

‘They shan’t take you,’ she said fiercely. ‘We’ll go away from here. To suffer humiliation, to be a criminal in the eyes of every one—’

‘Even myself. Where can we escape that?’

And in a little time the dark future became the present.

‘They won’t shame us,’ I said harshly. ‘We’re not their clowns to beat and spit at. I’ll take you to your people, Terry.’

‘And you, what will you do?’ she asked aghast.

‘I’ll go where they won’t get me; or if they do, it’ll cost them blood.’

‘Hugh!’

‘If you’d rather me be flung into prison and labelled a coward, because I won’t be involved in murder and outrage—’

‘I’ll go too.’

‘Better to hide with the fox,’ I went on drearily.

‘I go where you go,’ she said.

‘Have you forgotten what Duncan told you?’

‘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.