people like me—­and everybody.  And after supper they took me on to some people they didn’t know very well; people who had to do with some School of Dramatic Art.  There were two or three young actresses there and a singer and people of that sort, sitting about smoking cigarettes, and we began talking plays and books and picture shows and all that stuff; and suddenly there was a knocking at the door and some one went out and found a policeman with a warrant on the landing.  They took off our host’s son....  It had to do with a murder....”

Hugh paused.  “It was the Bedford Mansions mystery.  I don’t suppose you remember about it or read about it at the time.  He’d killed a man....  It doesn’t matter about the particulars anyhow, but what I mean is the effect.  The effect of a comfortable well-lit orderly room and the sense of harmless people—­and then the door opening and the policeman and the cold draught flowing in. Murder! A girl who seemed to know the people well explained to me in whispers what was happening.  It was like the opening of a trap-door going down into some pit you have always known was there, but never really believed in.”

“I know,” said Mr. Britling.  “I know.”

“That’s just how I feel about this war business.  There’s no real death over here.  It’s laid out and boxed up.  And accidents are all padded about.  If one got a toss from a horse here, you’d be in bed and comfortable in no time....  And there; it’s like another planet.  It’s outside....  I’m going outside....  Instead of there being no death anywhere, it is death everywhere, outside there.  We shall be using our utmost wits to kill each other.  A kind of reverse to this world.”

Mr. Britling nodded.

“I’ve never seen a dead body yet.  In Dower-House land there aren’t dead bodies.”

“We’ve kept things from you—­horrid things of that sort.”

“I’m not complaining,” said Hugh....  “But—­Master Hugh—­the Master Hugh you kept things from—­will never come back.”

He went on quickly as his father raised distressed eyes to him.  “I mean that anyhow this Hugh will never come back.  Another one may.  But I shall have been outside, and it will all be different....”

He paused.  Never had Mr. Britling been so little disposed to take up the discourse.

“Like a man,” he said, seeking an image and doing no more than imitate his son’s; “who goes out of a busy lighted room through a trap-door into a blizzard, to mend the roof....”

For some moments neither father nor son said anything more.  They had a queer sense of insurmountable insufficiency.  Neither was saying what he had wanted to say to the other, but it was not clear to them now what they had to say to one another....

“It’s wonderful,” said Mr. Britling.

Hugh could only manage:  “The world has turned right over....”

“The job has to be done,” said Mr. Britling.