Then that vast sea of men and women gathered itself up and poured with a hoarse roar towards the Palace. There was a check, and I fancy the first-comers must have been pressed against the railings; I threw open my window in time to hear a mutter rolling from lip to lip: “The king! They’re calling for the king.” Later, though we could see and hear nothing of it, the word was passed: “The king! He’s speaking”; later still: “He’s finished! Give him a cheer! Hip, hip! _Come on._” The human sea must have eddied at the Palace. Five minutes later, as the crowd below my window surged forward, a returning stream poured down the Processional Avenue into Trafalgar Square; and a new current set in towards the Abbey. There was little cheering now, though every one made individual noises of greeting and laughter. A War Office car hooted its deliberate way across Horse Guards’ Parade and was promptly seized by three wounded soldiers and four girl-clerks, who ranged themselves along the running-boards and perched on the bonnet. As though all had been awaiting a signal, the crowd broke into little groups and swept like swarming bees upon every vehicle in sight. So long as all could move, it did not matter whither they hurried: something, all seemed to feel, must be happening somewhere else. “The war’s over!,” some one cried; and mechanically, like hysterical children, a dozen others repeated uncomprehendingly: “The war’s over! The war’s over! The war’s over! The war’s over.” . . . “And the funny thing,” said Raymond Stornaway, blowing his nose vigorously, “is that they don’t know what to do next.” “Do _we_?,” asked Bertrand; and, for once, he seemed less anxious to instruct than to be instructed. 5 No one wanted to speak first. No one wanted to move. No one cared to look any one else in the eyes. Lady Crawleigh, I think, was the first to recover; and she was slipping out of the room, with a twisted smile, when Raymond put his back to the door and took the position in hand with a general invitation to lunch with him at the Carlton. “No speeches or ‘celebrations’,” he promised. “If you’ll fight your way there as best you can, I’ll telephone for a table.”