I was a little disturbed by the thought that even I could not make myself wholly independent of what, for want of a better word, I had to call fate; independent of a certain Providence whose concurrence I daily implored, but on whose nature I deliberately tried to set a more religious complexion than did Malory, who was frankly, in every instinct, a pagan. Wriggle as I might, I could not wriggle away from the fact that as prime essentials to the success of my scheme stood the survival of Malory and the non-survival of Westmacott. If the unknown chose to thwart me in these two particulars, my cherished plan must come to naught, but a conviction, whose very intensity persuaded me of its truth, entered into my spirit that in this respect at all events all would be well. As the war progressed I fell into one of the inconsistencies of our nature, for as the news of Malory continued good I came gradually to feel that his safety up to this point was growing into a kind of earnest for his safety in the future—a conclusion in itself totally illogical—whereas the equally continued safety of Westmacott, whom I so ardently desired out of the way, distressed me not at all. Was I presumptuous in thus constituting myself the guardian angel of two lives? I was only a poor wreck, flotsam of the war, cheated of the man’s part I had hoped to play, and nursing my scheme like an old maid cheated of the woman’s part she, on her side, should have played on earth. I shall not dwell longer than I need upon the days of the war, considering them rather as an incident, a protracted incident, than as a central point in my story, for we have no need or desire to revive artificially the realities we have lived through. I quote, however, Malory on this subject:— “... Our sons will scarcely be _our_ children, for the war will have fathered them and mothered them both. The children of the war! growing up with the shadow of that great parent in the background of their lives, a progenitor dark as the night, yet radiant as the sun; torn with misery, yet splendid and entire with glory; poor and bereft by ruin, yet rich with gold-mines as the earth; a race of men sprung from loins broad and magnificent. They will stand like the survivors of the Flood when the waters had retreated from the clean-washed world. What will they make of their opportunity? They will not, I trust, hold up a mirror to reflect the familiar daily tragedy, but out of the depths of their own enfranchised hearts will call up a store of little, lovely, sincere, human, and simple things wherewith to make life sweet. They must be as children in a meadow. Let us have done with pretence and gloom. There is no room now in the world for the introspective melancholy of the idler. We hope for a world of active sanity.”