“What else?” asked Ethel coldly, and meeting her brother’s challenging eyes with a perfectly steady gaze. She was a handsome girl with regular, classical features, and tight lips, as narrow-minded, I imagined, as a mid-Victorian spinster in a cathedral town, and as hard as granite in principle and prejudice. Wickham weakened, after signs of an explosion of rage. He spoke gently, and revealed a hope to which I think he clung desperately. “When Elsa comes you will all fall in love with her.” It was the worst thing he could have said, though he was unconscious of his “gaffe.” His sister Ethel reddened, and I could see her mouth harden. “So far, I have remarkably little love for Germans, male or female.” “I hope we shall behave with Christian charity,” said Lady Brand. Sir Amyas Brand coughed uneasily, and then tried to laugh off his embarrassment for my benefit. “There will be considerable scandal in my constituency!” “To hell with that!” said Brand irritably. “It’s about time the British public returned to sanity.” “Ah!” said Sir Amyas, “there’s a narrow border-line between sanity and shell-shock. Really, it is distressing what a number of men seem to come back with disordered nerves. All these crimes, all these cases of violence----” It gave him a chance of repeating a leading article which he had read that morning in _The Times_. It provided a conversation without controversy until the end of dinner. In the hall, before I left, Wickham Brand laughed, rather miserably. “It’s not going to be easy! Elsa will find the climate rather cold here, eh?” “She will win them over,” I said hopefully, and these words cheered him. “Why, yes, they’re bound to like her.” We arranged for the Paris trip two weeks later, but before then we were sure to meet at Eileen O’Connor’s. As a matter of fact, we dined together with Daddy Small next day, and Eileen was with him. V I found Eileen O’Connor refreshing and invigorating, so that it was good to be in her company. Most people in England at that time, at least those I met, were “nervy,” depressed, and apprehensive of evil to come. There was hardly a family I knew who had not one vacant chair wherein a boy had sat when he had come home from school or office, and afterwards on leave. Their ghosts haunted these homes and were present in any company where people gathered for conversation or distraction. The wound to England’s soul was unhealed, and the men who came back had received grave hurt, many of them, to their nervous and moral health.