"I don’t know about that," the colonel objected. "As far as I see, things are pretty much the same as they’ve always been, and they’re getting more so." "I suppose none of us sees more than we have our eyes open to. Things of the greatest importance to us happen, and we don’t know that they’re going on." "I hope that that kind of song and dance isn’t going on—the breakdown of our civilization. It wasn’t for that we gave ’em hell at Château-Thierry." "Oh, none of us knows what anything is for, except in the vaguest way. All we can do is to plod ahead and follow the thread of flame." "Follow the thread of what?" I was sufficiently master of myself to indulge in a mild laugh. "That’s just an expression that’s been in my mind during the time when I’ve been—been floundering about. Name I invented for—for a principle." In this, however, he was not interested. "Yes, but your collapsing house—" "It may not come down altogether. I’m neither a prophet nor a prophet’s son. All I can see is what I suppose everybody sees, that our civilization has been rotten. It couldn’t hold together. It hadn’t the cohesive strength. Perhaps I was wrong in saying that it was falling down; it’s more as if we were pulling it down, to build up something better. It’s our blind instinct toward perfection—" But refusing to listen to any more, he got up to go. A brave man in the presence of enemies of flesh and blood, intellectual foes frightened him. At the first sound of their shells he rushed for his mental dugout which he burrowed in the ground of denial. "I don’t believe that" and "All tommyrot" seemed to him shelters from any kind of danger. But the main point to me was that I had in a measure not only held my own but got on to superior ground. I had been able to talk; in doing so I had got him at a slight disadvantage. The bit of self-respect inspired by this achievement enabled me to play the host and accompany him to the door with the kind of informal formality to which I had been so long unaccustomed. And in performing this small duty I made a discovery. As he preceded me down-stairs I remembered seeing the back of his head once before. It was the kind of head not easily forgotten. Moreover, I had seen it in circumstances that had caused me to note it in particular. Where and when and how were details that did not at once return to me; but I knew that the association was sinister. As I returned from my mission in showing him to the door I heard Vio speaking. "Come in here, Billy. There’s something I want to say." She was still behind the tea-table, pensive rather than subdued, resolute rather than unhappy. "I liked your talking like that," she began at once, without looking up at me. "It’s—it’s the way we shall have to play the game." A box of cigarettes stood on the tea-table. I took one and struck a match, the usual stage-trick for gaining a little time.