that he himself had often failed in devotion, in rectitude, in sheer
grit.

The supreme lesson of the war was its revelation of what human nature
actually was. And the solace of the lesson, the hope for triumph,
lay in the fact that human nature must be substantially the same
throughout the world. If we were humanly imperfect, so at least was
the enemy.

Perhaps the frame of society was about to collapse. Perhaps Queen,
deliberately courting destruction, and being destroyed, was the symbol
of society. What matter? Perhaps civilisation, by its nobility and its
elements of reason, and by the favour of destiny, would be saved from
disaster after frightful danger, and Concepcion was its symbol....

All he knew was that he had a heavy day's work before him on the
morrow, and in relief from pain and insoluble problems he turned to
face that work, thankful; thankful that (owing originally to Queen!)
he had discovered in the war a task which suited his powers, which was
genuinely useful, and which would only finish with the war; thankful
for the prospect of meeting Concepcion at the week-end and exploring
with her the marvellous provocative potentialities that now drew them
together; thankful, too, that he had a balanced and sagacious mind,
and could judge justly. (Yes, he was already forgetting his bitter
condemnation of himself as a simpleton!)

How in his human self-sufficiency could he be expected to know that
he had judged the negligible Christine unjustly? Was he divine that
he could see in the figure of the wanton who peered at soldiers in the
street a self-convinced mystic envoy of the most clement Virgin, an