Everything was still; her body and her soul were still; her heart was still; it beat steadily. She had started forwards to go to him when the tree thrust itself between them, and he was gone. And Frances was still coming through the door as Veronica had seen her when she turned. She was calling to her to come in out of the sun. XXIV The young men had gone--Morton Ellis, who had said he was damned if he'd fight for his country; and Austin Mitchell who had said he hadn't got a country; and Monier-Owen, who had said that England was not a country you could fight for. George Wadham had gone long ago. That, Michael said, was to be expected. Even a weak gust could sweep young Wadham off his feet--and he had been fairly carried away. He could no more resist the vortex of the War than he could resist the vortex of the arts. Michael had two pitiful memories of the boy: one of young Wadham swaggering into Stephen's room in uniform (the first time he had it on), flushed and pleased with himself and talking excitedly about the "Great Game"; and one of young Wadham returned from the Front, mature and hard, not talking about the "Great Game" at all, and wincing palpably when other people talked; a young Wadham who, they said, ought to be arrested under the Defence of the Realm Act as a quencher of war-enthusiasms. The others had gone later, one by one, each with his own gesture: Mitchell and Monier-Owen when Stephen went; Ellis the day after Stephen's death. It had taken Stephen's death to draw him. Only Michael remained. He told them they were mistaken if they thought their going would inspire him to follow them. It, and Stephen's death, merely intensified the bitterness he felt towards the War. He was more than ever determined to keep himself pure from it, consecrated to his Forlorn Hope. If they fell back, all the more reason why be should go on. And, while he waited for the moment of vision, he continued Stephen's work on the _Green Review_. Stephen had left it to him when he went out. Michael tried to be faithful to the tradition he thus inherited; but gradually Stephen's spirit disappeared from the _Review_ and its place was taken by the clear, hard, unbreakable thing that was Michael's mind. And Michael knew that he was beginning to make himself felt. But Stephen's staff, such as it was, and nearly all his contributors had gone to the War, one after another, and Michael found himself taking all their places. He began to feel a strain, which he took to be the strain of overwork, and he went down to Renton to recover. That was on the Tuesday that followed Veronica's Sunday.