He wailed away, filling the air with prophecies of doom and disaster. They could hear him, as he rushed about the hotel telling the news, taking people into corners and informing them that it was a Bit Thick. There was something pitiful about him ... he had climbed to a comfortable competence from a hard beginning ... and something comical, too, something that made them all wish to laugh. The veneer of manners which he had acquired with so much trouble had worn off in a moment, and the careful speech, the rigid insistence on aspirates, to speak, took to its heels. He appeared to them suddenly, carrying an atlas. "Where the 'ell is Serbia anyway?" he demanded. "I can't find the damn place on the map!" 2 They stood about, gaping at each other, unable to realise what had happened to them. One of the windows of the drawing-room was open, and the subdued buzz of women's voices came through it to the terrace. Monotonously, exasperatingly, one querulous voice sent a fretful question through the bewildered speeches of the women ... "But what's it about? That's what I want to know. I've asked everybody, but nobody seems to know!" Some one made an inaudible reply to the querulous voice, and then it went on: "Serbia! That's what some one else said, but we aren't Serbia. We're England, and I don't see what we've got to do with it. If they want to go and fight, let them. That's what I say!..." Gilbert and Henry sat in the middle of the group on the terrace, listening to what was being said about them. They had thrown the newspapers aside ... there was hysteria in the headlines ... and were sitting in a sort of stupor, wondering what would happen next. The buzzing voice, demanding to be told what the war was about, still droned through the window, irritating them vaguely until the man who had first brought the news got up from his seat, and went to the window and shut it noisily. "Damn 'er," he said, as he came back to his seat. "'Oo cares whether she knows what it's about or not! What's it got to do with 'er any'ow. She won't 'ave to do none of the fightin'!" Fighting! Henry sat up and looked at the man. Why, of course, there would be fighting ... and perhaps England would be drawn into the war, and then!... A girl came out of the hotel, with towels under her arm, and called to them. "Coming to bathe?" she said. They looked at her vacantly. "Bathe!" said Henry. "Yes. It's a ripping morning!" They stood up, and looked towards the sea that was white with sunshine ... and then turned away again. It seemed to Henry as if, down there by the rocks, in a splash of sunlight, a corpse were lying ... festering.... He sat down again, mechanically picking up a newspaper and reading once more the telegrams he had already read many times. "Come along," the girl said. "You might just as well bathe!" Gilbert looked up at her and smiled. "I was just wondering," he said, "what one ought to do!" 3