The answering silence appalled her. She ran out into the passage to Miles’s door and knocked urgently. She did not know what she wanted of him. She only knew that she could not bear to be alone. After what seemed a moment’s hesitation the bolt was drawn, and Miles’s flushed face appeared in the aperture. He looked curiously relieved when he saw who his visitor was. "What is it?" he demanded curtly. "I am busy packing." His tone gave her back her self-possession—or the appearance of self-possession. "I only wanted to know if you were at home," she said. "I—am going out for a little." The idea had come to her as she spoke. The confusion and noise of the streets seemed to offer to her the sole antidote for the feverish restlessness which had come over her. Miles nodded. "All right. Where—where is Wolff?" The light was behind him, and she could not see his face. Nevertheless she felt that the expression in his eyes was tense, excited, that he was studying her as though on her answer depended more than she guessed. "He has just gone out." "Thanks. How long will you be?" "I don’t know. I am only going to get fresh air." "You might go towards the Kriegsministerium," Miles suggested carelessly. "You might hear if there is any answer come from home. War may be declared at any minute." Nora made no answer. His words had set her heart beating with pain, and the pain increased as five minutes later she found herself being swept along in the stream of the crowd. Everything was very quiet. It seemed to her that not one of those with whom she was borne forward spoke. A silence, ominous as the hush before the storm, weighed upon all, and only the faces coming and going out of the circles of lamp-light revealed the forces of passion which were awaiting the hour when they should be set free. After the first moment, Nora ceased to notice all this. She was winged with a panting, rapidly increasing anxiety which obliterated everything—even to her own personality. She forgot Wolff, she forgot herself and the conflict before her; she had become an atom in one mighty community with whose existence her own was irrevocably bound. She was no longer Wolff’s wife, she was not even Nora Ingestre; she was English, and, as though from far away a voice called her by some all-powerful incantation, she forced her way forward. War! Her heart exulted. War! Her excited imagination transported her to the centre of another and a greater city; she felt closed in on every side by a people whose blood was hers; she heard their voices, a magic stream of sympathy poured from them to her; she heard the tramp of a thousand feet, the clash of martial music, the roar of cheering, and in the brilliant light bayonets flashed like a moving ribbon of silver. War! And if War—why then, Victory, her country’s final, grandest triumph!