And that night I told her of my decision. “Are you expecting me to come with you?,” she asked. “It will be better for us both if I go alone. When I come back, you’ll have had time to think quietly . . .” “I can picture you talking to your clerks like this,” Barbara mocked. “‘Your last chance, remember!’ . . .” “To think quietly,” I repeated, “whether you would prefer me to live in Ireland. Conditions are becoming normal there . . .” “You must _really_ decide for yourself where you want to live,” she answered, without hinting whether she wished me to live alone. A week later I sailed from Southampton. If I had expected to find any striking change on my return, I should have been disappointed; but I fancy that I had by now ceased to look for the romantic reconciliations of the film-world. There was little enough change anywhere. My father-in-law had given me a farewell dinner on the night before I sailed; he gave me a dinner of welcome on the night that I returned. Tempers, I thought, were a little shorter; nerves a little thinner. The vague feeling that something decisive must soon happen reminded me of 1914, when the world expected a cataclysm and almost hoped for it. “And certainly the conference has done nothing to avert it,” I told Bertrand at the end of dinner. “Not the French show-down?,” he asked. “After this, we can talk frankly instead of gushing about our gallant allies. We all made grievous mistakes at the peace conference, George, but it’s the French who are keeping us from repairing them.” “Which will coerce which?,” I asked. The question, I could see, was not palatable. “They’ve the best air-force in the world and could lay London in ruins within a week,” Bertrand growled. “It’s immeasurably superior to anything we saw in the war. They can hold Germany down with aeroplanes and niggers; and, when you ask them why they won’t reduce their submarines, you don’t get a satisfactory answer. I can give it to you. They’re going to make themselves masters of Europe before any one has time to stop them. They worked against us in Poland, they’re working against us in the near east.” “How do you propose to make use of this knowledge?” “It may lead to clear thinking. Why _we_ should pay six shillings in the pound to relieve them of an income-tax, when they’re amassing armaments . . .” There was very little change anywhere. Lady John Carstairs hoped vaguely that we were not going to desert our late allies; Violet Loring whispered that it was all very well for dear Phyllis to preach at us, but America had deserted every one. I provoked a passing storm by asserting that all international debts would have ultimately to be forgiven; and, had any one asked wherein the world was safer or happier than in 1914, he must have waited long for an answer. An hour later, as we drove home, Barbara enquired expressionlessly whether I had enjoyed my holiday from her.