London was a dark forest with nymphs and satyrs at play in the glades and Pan stamping his hoofs like a giddy goat. All the passions let loose by war, the breaking-down of old restraints, the gladness of youth at escape from death, provided the motive-power, unconscious and primitive, behind this Carnival of the London crowds. From some church a procession came into Trafalgar Square, trying to make a pathway through the multitude. A golden Cross was raised high and clergymen in surplices, with acolytes and faithful women, came chanting solemn words. The crowd closed about them. A mirthful sailor teased the singing women with his tickler. Loud guffaws, shrill laughter, were in the wake of the procession, though some men stood to attention as the Cross passed, and others bared their heads and something hushed the pagan riot a moment. At the windows in Pall Mall men in evening clothes who had been officers in the world-war, sat by the pretty women who had driven through the crowds, looking out on the noisy pageant of the street. A piano-organ was playing, and two young soldiers danced with ridiculous grace, imitating the elegance and languorous ecstasy of society dancers. One of them wore a woman’s hat and skirt and was wonderfully comic. I stood watching them, a little stupefied by all the noise and tumult of this “Peace” night, and with a sense of tragic irony, remembering millions of boys who lay dead in quiet fields and the agony of many peoples in Europe. It was then that I saw young Harding. He was sitting in his club window just above the dancing soldiers, and looking out with a grave and rather woebegone face, remarkable in contrast with the laughing faces of fellow-clubmen and their women. I recognised him after a moment’s query in my mind, and said, “Hulloa, Harding!” He stared at me and I saw the sudden dawning of remembrance. “Come in,” he answered. “I had no idea you were back again!” So I went into his club and sat by his side at the open window, glad of this retreat from the pressure and tumult of the mob below. He talked conventionally for a little while, and asked me whether I had had “a good time” in the States, and whether I was busy, and why the Americans seemed so hostile to President Wilson. I understood from him that he approved of the Peace Treaty and was glad that Germany and Austria had been “wiped off the map” as far as it was humanly possible. We chatted like that for what I suppose was something more than half-an-hour, while we looked out upon the seething multitude in the street below, when suddenly the boy’s mask fell from him, so abruptly, and with such a naked revelation of a soul in anguish, that concealment was impossible.