‘As soon as people discover that there’s nothing martial in war they turn to books,’ she said.

‘Not to mine,’ I insisted. ‘What! read social histories when they’ve war!’

I could not be quiet, I could not hold my tongue, pretending that the world was as it had been.

‘Maybe London’s a heap like Babylon,’ I burst out, ‘and the hoodie crows glut themselves in the streets of Glasgow.’

‘We’d have seen signs,’ she answered slowly.

‘Maybe it’s all a false alarm,’ I said.

‘The guns? the trains?’ she returned significantly.

‘We’ll soon know,’ I said.

‘What?’ she demanded. ‘What do you think we’ll find, Hugh? God knows,’ she answered herself. ‘Why are we going?’

‘Why are we here?’ I cried wildly. ‘We’ll come back—’

‘Yes, Hugh, we’ll come back.’

‘And live here, knowing nothing.’

‘We might be in worse places, Hugh. And know worse things than nothing.’

‘Our stores will go done at last—’

‘We must get more.’

‘More? How?’

‘How? Take them if we can—go where they are—if we can’t get them, live without them as the beasts do.’

‘And die the way they do, for lack of food, for lack of warmth—die like beasts.’

‘If I could make you patient, Hugh. You expect to-morrow to solve all our questions, to tell us all that’s happened. It won’t do that, Hugh. We’ll see our house, we’ll gather some of the things we ought to have brought originally—’

‘We’re bound to discover—’ I broke in.

‘What?’ she asked with scorn. ‘That we’ve done right? Don’t you know that already? If we haven’t done right, nothing will ever change it. All you’ll see there,’ —she extended her arm to the north— ‘is the backwash of trouble; all you’ll hear is rumour as various as our own minds make.’

‘Nothing more, nothing at all?’ I said. ‘Then we can stay, and doubt, and never be sure, here till we die.’

‘If I could save you from building up hopes of finding more than we’ll ever find out,’ she said, ‘it would make me glad even if we discovered—even if we discovered deadly things.’

‘Then we had better stay where we are. At least we’ll see signs of war—we’ll see trains—’

‘Must you have signs?’ she demanded. ‘Must you put your hands in the holes of the nails, before you believe?’

I stared out over the signless land.

‘I can’t help the way I’m made,’ I said at last. ‘I can’t feel here, in my heart, that the thing has happened, until I see its mark.’

‘The mark is in your face and on your heart already, Hugh.’

‘To live in doubt—’ I whispered.