Evelyn and Primula too, now back at Lowndes Square, accentuated uncertainty. They could talk of nothing but the soldiers they had seen drilling in Kensington Gardens, the motor that had dashed—astounding phenomenon—down the Broad Walk. They reminded him of the episode, trivial at the time but constantly recurring, of Patricia’s brother, Jack Baynet. Jack had been mobilized with the 6th Division; had asked Peter and Patricia to visit him in Camp at Cambridge. Peter had promised to go, cried off at the last moment. One couldn’t very well mingle, an able-bodied civilian _in mufti_, with men who were going to France within the week. . . . An eternal Questioning! Everything, everybody, seemed an embodied and personal demand. Everything, everybody—the khaki, blossoming now like a brown flower at every street-corner; the boy Parkins who had to be assured that his place would be kept before he enlisted; a traveller and two mechanics at the factory who went first and asked afterwards; Miss Macpherson’s eyes when she dictated the Havana mail; Pat. For Patricia grew very silent those days. . . . By the first week in September Peter had solved the Questioning; reduced it to a question. And the question, briefly, was this: “To join up meant the almost certain sacrifice of Nirvana. Not to join up, meant the definite loss of self-respect. Which should he do?” He had no fear of the soldiering part: on the contrary—being entirely and blessedly ignorant of warfare’s actualities—it seemed to him the obvious, glorious _and easy_ solution of his problem. To abandon his business-responsibilities, on the other hand, implied—quite apart from the pang of giving up the thing he most loved—a lack of moral courage, a yielding to popular clamour. Curiously enough, it was not Patricia but Hubert Rawlings who clinched Peter’s decision. § 5 It was a month and three days since the outbreak of war. Paris—thought Peter, as he sat alone in the back office at Lime Street—was practically safe. Still, it might easily be six months before the Cossacks got to Berlin. Meanwhile. . . . The telephone-bell jangled; he took up the receiver, heard his brother-in-law’s voice. “Peter Jameson speaking. . . . That you, Hubert? . . . Right, I’ll be in if you come along at once.”