The conductor and the fare-paying had interrupted the rhythm of their communication. They were silent. The bus ran noisily along the wave-furrowed shiny tarred street, with the dark mystery of Kensington Gardens to the right and the equally mysterious boarding-houses of Bayswater to the left. Near the street-lamps the grass behind the railing was a vivid artificial green, as if some one had splashed down a bucket-ful of bright paint. Like savages in some primitive dance, the ancient trees swayed slowly, irregularly and mysteriously in the strong wind. A red apocalyptic glow from the lights of Oxford Street stained luridly and uneasily the low rolling clouds before them. The grey monster Ennui of Sunday-in-London had vanished. George took his hat off and let the wind rumple his hair. Their young cheeks were fresh with driving moist wind. “Don’t you really like the Pre-Raphaelites?” asked Elizabeth, as the bus slowed down near Lancaster Gate. “I used to. About three years ago I was quite cracked about Rossetti and Burne-Jones and Morris. Now I simply hate them. I can still read Browning and Swinburne—Browning for his sense of life, Swinburne for his intoxicating rhetoric. But after spending three months in Paris I got frightfully excited about modern painting. Do you know Apollinaire?” “No, who’s he?” “Oh, he’s a Polish Jew who has written some quite good poems and does amusing word-pictures he calls Calligrammes. He lives by writing and editing obscene books, and he’s the great defender of the new painters like Picasso and Braque and Léger and Picabia.” “The Cubists?” “Yes.” “I’ve only heard of them. I never saw any of their work. I thought they were just ‘wild men’ and _fumistes?_” “You wait ten years, and see then if you dare to say that Picasso is a _fumiste!_ But haven’t you been to Paris?” “Yes, I was there last year, in September.” “We must have been there together. How curious, I wish I’d seen you.” “Oh, it was very dull. I was with father and mother, and everybody we met kept talking about the coming war with Germany. A friend of father’s in the Admiralty told him in confidence that it was absolutely certain to happen.” “What nonsense!” said George explosively, “what absolute nonsense! Haven’t you read Norman Angell’s ‘Great Illusion’? He shows quite conclusively that war does nearly as much damage to the victor as the conquered. And he also says that the structure of modern international commerce and finance is so delicate and widespread that a war couldn’t possibly last more than a few weeks without coming to an end automatically, because all the nations would be ruined. I’ll lend you the book if you like.” “I don’t know anything about such things, but father’s friend said the Government was very worried about the position.” “I can’t believe it. What! A war between European nations in the twentieth century? It’s quite unthinkable. We’re far too civilized. It’s over forty years since the Franco-Prussian War....”