george woke up in the middle of the night. lois slept calmly; he could just hear her soft breathing. he thought of all the occupied bedrooms, of the health of children, the incalculable quality in wives, the touchy stupidity of nurses and servants. the mere human weight of the household oppressed him terribly. and he thought of the adamant of landlords, the shifty rapacity of tradesmen, the incompetence of clerks, the mere pompous foolishness of government departments, the arrogance of jew patrons, and the terrifying complexity of problems of architecture on a large scale. he was the atlas supporting a vast world a thousand times more complex than any problem of architecture. he wondered how he did it. but he did do it, alone; and he kept on doing it. let him shirk the burden, and not a world but an entire universe would crumble. if he told lois that he was going to leave her, she would collapse; she would do dreadful things. he was indispensable not only at home but professionally. all was upon his shoulders and upon nobody else's. he was bound, he was a prisoner, he had no choice, he was performing his highest duty, he was fulfilling the widest usefulness of which he was capable ... besides, supposing he did go insane and shirk the burden, they would all say that he had been influenced by lucas's uniform—the mere sight of the uniform!—like a girl! he could not stand that, because it would be true. not that he would ever admit its truth! he recalled lucas's tact in refraining from any suggestion, even a jocular suggestion, that he, george, ought also to be in uniform. lucas was always tactful. be damned to his tact! and the too eager excuses made by lois in his behalf also grated on his susceptibility. he had no need of excuses. the woman was taciturn by nature, and yet she was constantly saying too much! and did any of the three of them—lois, laurencine, and lucas—really appreciate the war? they did not. they could not envisage it. lucas was wearing uniform solely in obedience to an instinct.

at this point the cycle of his reflections was completed, and began again. he thought of all the occupied bedrooms.... thus, in the dark, warm night the contents of his mind revolved endlessly, with extreme tedium and extreme distress, and each moment his mood became more morbid.

an occasional sound of traffic penetrated into the room,—strangely mournful, a reminder of the immense and ineffable melancholy of a city which could not wholly lose itself in sleep. the window lightened. he could descry his wife's portable clock on the night-table. a quarter to four. turning over savagely in bed, he muttered: "my night's done for. and nearly five hours to breakfast. good god!" the cycle resumed, and was enlarged.

at intervals he imagined that he dozed; he did doze, if it is possible while you are dozing to know that you doze. his personality separated into two personalities, if not more. he was on a vast plain, and yet he was not there, and the essential point of the scene was that he was not there. thousands and tens of thousands of men stood on this plain, which had no visible boundaries. a roll-call was proceeding. a resounding and mysterious voice called out names, and at each name a man stepped briskly from the crowds and saluted and walked away. but there was no visible person to receive the salute; the voice was bodiless. george became increasingly apprehensive; he feared a disaster, yet he could not believe that it would occur. it did occur. before it arrived he knew that it was arriving. the voice cried solemnly:

"george edwin cannon."

an awful stillness and silence followed, enveloping the entire infinite plain. george trembled. he was there, but he was not there. men looked at each other, raising their eyebrows. the voice did not deign to repeat the call. after a suitable pause, the voice cried solemnly:

"everard lucas."

and lucas in his new uniform stepped gravely forward and saluted and walked away.

"was i asleep or awake?" george asked himself. he could not decide. at any rate the scene impressed him. the bigness of the plain, the summons, the silence, the utter absence of an expression of reproof or regret—of any comment whatever.

at five o'clock he arose, and sat down in his dressing-gown at lois's very untidy and very small writing-desk, and wrote a letter on her notepaper. the early morning was lovely; it was celestial.

"dear davids," the letter began.—that would annoy the fellow, who liked the address respectful.—"dear davids, i have decided to join the army, and therefore cannot proceed further with your commission. however, the general idea is complete. i advise you to get it carried out by lucas & enwright. enwright is the best architect in england. you may take this from me. i'm his disciple. you might ring me up at the office this afternoon.—yours faithfully, george cannon"

"p.s.—assuming you go to lucas & enwright, i can either make some arrangement with them as to sharing fees myself, or you can pay me an agreed sum for the work i've done, and start afresh elsewhere. i shall want all the money i can get hold of."

yes, sir isaac would be very angry. george smiled. he was not triumphant, but he was calm. in the full sanity of the morning, every reason against his going into the army had vanished. the material objection was ridiculous—with edwin clayhanger at the back of him! moreover, some money would be coming in. the professional objection was equally ridiculous. the design for the indian barracks existed complete; and middle-aged mediocrity could carry it out in a fashion, and lucas & enwright could carry it out better than he could carry it out himself. as for davids, he had written. there was nothing else of importance in his office. the other competition had not been won. if people said that he had been influenced by lucas's uniform, well, they must say it. they would not say it for more than a few days. after a few days the one interesting fact would be that he had joined. by such simple and curt arguments did he annihilate the once overwhelming reasons against his joining the army.

but he did not trouble to marshal the reasons in favour of his joining the army. he had only one reason: he must! he quite ignored the larger aspects of the war—the future of civilization, freedom versus slavery, right versus wrong, even the responsibilities of citizenship and the implications of patriotism. his decision was the product, not of argument, but of feeling. however, he did not feel a bit virtuous. he had to join the army, and 'that was all there was to it.' a beastly nuisance, this world-war! it was interfering with his private affairs; it might put an end to his private affairs altogether; he hated soldiering; he looked inimically at the military caste. an unspeakable nuisance. but there the war was, and he was going to answer to his name. he simply could not tolerate the dreadful silence and stillness on the plain after his name had been called. "pooh! sheer sentimentality!" he said to himself, thinking of the vision—half-dream, half-fancy. "rotten sentimentality!"

he asked:

"damn it! am i an englishman or am i not?"

like most englishmen, he was much more an englishman than he ever suspected.

"what on earth are you doing, george?"

at the voice of his wife he gave a nervous jump, and then instantly controlled himself and looked round. her voice was soft, liquid, weak with slumber. but, lying calmly on one side, her head half buried in the pillow, and the bedclothes pushed back from her shoulders, she was wideawake and gazed at him steadily.

"i'm just writing a letter," he answered gruffly.

"now? what letter?"

"here! you shall read it." he walked straight across the room in his gay pyjamas only partly hidden by the splendid dressing-gown, and handed her the letter. moving nothing but her hand, she took the letter and held it in front of her eyes. he sat down between the beds, on the edge of his own bed, facing her.

"whatever is it?"

"read it. you've got it," he said, with impatience. he was trembling, aware that the crisis had suddenly leapt at him.

" oh!"

she had read the opening phrase; she had received the first shock. but the tone of her exclamation gave no clue at all to her attitude. it might mean anything—anything. she shut her eyes; then glanced at him, terror-struck, appealing, wistful, implacable.

"not at once?"

"yes, at once."

"but surely you'll at least wait until after october."

he shook his head.

"but why can't you?"

"i can't."

"but there's no object—"

"i've got to do it."

"you're horribly cruel."

"well, that's me!" he was sullen, and as hard as a diamond.

"george, i shall never be able to stand it. it's too much to expect. it'll kill me."

"not it! what's the use of talking like that? if i'd been in the territorials before the war, like lots of chaps, i should have been gone long ago, and you'd have stood it all right. don't you understand we're at war? do you imagine the war can wait for things like babies?"

she cried:

"it's no good your going on in that strain. you can't leave me alone with all this house on my shoulders, and so that's flat."

"who wants to leave you all alone in the house? you can go and stay at ladderedge, children and nurse and all." this scheme presented itself to him as he spoke.

"of course i can't! we can't go and plant ourselves on people like that. besides—"

"can't you? you'll see!"

he caught her eye. why was he being so brutal to her? what conceivable purpose was served by this harshness? he perceived that his nerves were overstrung. and in a swift rush of insight he saw the whole situation from her point of view. she was exhausted by gestation; she lived in a world distorted. could she help her temperament? she was in the gravest need of his support; and he was an ass, a blundering fool. his severity melted within him, and secretly he became tender as only a man can be.

"you silly girl!" he said, slightly modifying his voice, taking care not to disclose all at once the change in his mood.

" you silly girl! can't you see they'll be so proud to have you they won't be able to contain themselves? they'll turn the whole place upside-down for you. i know them. they'll pretend it's nothing, but mother won't sleep at night for thinking how to arrange things for the best, and as for my cuckoo of an uncle, if you notice something funny about your feet, it'll be the esteemed alderman licking your boots. you'll have the time of your life. in fact they'll ruin your character for you. there'll be no holding you afterwards."

she did not smile, but her eyes smiled. he had got the better of her. he had been cleverer than she was. she was beaten.

"but we shall have no money."

"read the letter, child. i'm not a fool."

"i know you're not a fool. no one knows that better than me."

he went on:

"and what's uncle's money for, if it comes to that?"

"but we can't spunge on them like that!"

"spunge be dashed! what's money for? it's no good till it's spent. if he can't spend it on us, who can he spend it on? he always makes out he's fiendishly hard, but he's the most generous idiot ever born."

"yes, you're awfully like him."

"i'm not."

he was suddenly alive to the marvellous charm of the intimacy of the scene with his wife, in the early summer dawn, in the silent, enchanted house of sleepers, in the disorder of the heaped bedroom. they were alone together, shameless in front of one another, and nobody knew or saw, or could ever know or see. their relations were unique, the resultant of long custom, of friction, of misunderstanding, of affection, of incomprehensible instincts, of destiny itself. he thought: "i have lived for this sensation, and it is worth living for."

without the slightest movement, she invited him with her strange eyes, and as she did so she was as mysterious as ever she had been. he bent down responsively. she put her hot, clammy hands on his shoulders, and kept his head at a little distance and looked through his eyes into his soul. the letter had dropped to the floor.

"i knew you would!" she murmured, and then snatched him to her, and kissed him, and kept her mouth on his.

"you didn't," he said, as soon as she loosed him. "i didn't know myself."

but he privately admitted that perhaps she did know. she had every fault, but she was intelligent. constantly he was faced with that fact. she did not understand the significance of the war; she lacked imagination; but her understanding was sometimes terrible. she was devious; but she had a religion. he was her religion. she would cast the god underfoot—and then in a passion of repentance restore it ardently to the sacred niche.

she said:

"i couldn't have borne it if everard had gone and you hadn't. but of course you meant to go all the time."

that was how she saved his amour-propre.

"i always knew you were a genius—"

"oh! chuck it, kid!"

"but you're more, somehow. this business—"

"you don't mean joining the army?"

"yes."

"what rot! there's nothing in it. fellows are doing it everywhere."

she smiled superiorly, and then inquired:

"how do you join? what are you going to do? shall you ask everard?"

"well—" he hesitated. he had no desire to consult lucas.

"why don't you see colonel rannion?" she suggested.

"jove! that's a scheme. never thought of him!"

her satisfaction at the answer was childlike, and he was filled with delight that it should be so. they launched themselves into an interminable discussion about every possible arrangement of everything. but in a pause of it he destroyed its tremendous importance by remarking casually:

"no hurry, of course. i bet you i shall be kept knocking about here for months."