Actually it was in coming away from the ceremony of my reception that I met her in the street. “Come and have luncheon somewhere,” she said, “I’ve got something to tell you.” When we were comfortably ensconced at _Les Rossignols_, she turned to me and said, “Opal, my dear, I’ve just become a Catholic.” I said in a stupefied way, “So have I.” Then we giggled idiotically for a little; and cross-questioning proved that she also had written to Bishop Dives, and had been sent identically the same sermon-record! She then ordered a rather good Volnay, and when it appeared, leaning over coquettishly in its basket, she said, “Let us hope that this is drinkable, if not actually drinkworthy. Personally, I’ve got a droughtage on me which will demand a good deal of drinkage.” CHAPTER XV ENGLAND ON THE EVE OF THE GREAT WAR Our fathers, a degenerate race, Begot us scoundrels, to give place To something meaner yet unborn. HORACE, tr. STAPLETON. I suppose it is inevitable that those of us who have lived through a great world-crisis, such as the late war, should ask themselves or should be asked by others what it was like just before the crisis happened? How postured did the time of reckoning find us? Were we playing on, all unconscious, at the brink of a volcano? Or were we prepared—materially, morally, spiritually prepared—for what was to come upon us? The question is obviously not an easy one to answer. It is not easy to wipe out, even in imagination, the impressions left by nearly three years of war atmosphere and war strain. But, if only because there are not many of us left whose birth dates right back to the Five Years’ War, the last occasion when Europe became an armed camp, I feel that I ought to try and give my answer to that question, before I close these memoirs and bow myself out, to make way for younger authors with other messages.