But London proved disappointing: it did not seem to be thinking of its amusements at all. Archie called to see a friend who last week had shown himself an eager and admirable companion, but, found him to-day disinclined for another night of similar diversion, for he could neither think nor talk about anything else than the imminence of war. Archie felt himself quite incapable of taking any active interest in that; it weighted nothing in the balance compared with the stern duty of seeking enjoyment and forgetting about Helena. What if England did go to war with Germany? Certainly he hoped she would not; she had made no more than a friendly understanding with her Allies--indeed they were not even Allies, they were but well-disposed nations--but, even if she did, what then? There was an English fleet, was there not, which cost an immense amount of money to render invincible; but it was invincible. Why, then, should he bother about it, since he was not a sailor? It was further supposed that Germany had an invincible army; and there you were! And if England had no army at all to speak of, it was quite clear she could no more fight Germany on land than Germany could fight her by sea. So what on earth prevented a little dinner at a restaurant and an hour at a music-hall and a little supper somewhere and anything that turned up? Something always turned up, and was usually amusing for an hour or two. But his friend thought otherwise, and kept diving out into the street to get some fresh edition of an evening paper hot from the press and crammed with fresh inventions, and Archie left this insane patriot in disgust at his excitement over so detached an affair as a European war. He tried a second friend with no better success; there was a certain excuse for him, as he was a subaltern in the Guards. But for the first friend there was none, as he was only in an office in the city. There were still four or five hours to get through before it would be reasonable to think about dinner, after which, even if he started alone, the hours would take care of themselves very pleasantly; but he had to fill the interval somehow. There were some proofs of his book waiting for him at home, and, hoping to get interested in this first-born public child of his brain, he sat down with a view to correcting them. But he found himself reading the pages as if there was nothing intelligible printed on them. True, if he forced himself to attend, he could see that grammatical sentences succeeded each other; but they conveyed no further impression. There was a lot about the sea, but why on earth had he taken the trouble to write it? He could remember writing it; he could call up an image of himself sitting in the garden at Silorno, eagerly writing, conscientiously erasing, walking up and down in the attempt to frame a phrase that should exactly reproduce some mood of his mind. But what had inspired those strivings and despairs and exultations?