him, and called again. Becoming frightened, she raised herself by a
great effort and peered through the glass. At first she was too puzzled
to understand what had happened. He was hanging over the front of the
balcony, with his head twisted oddly. Twisted and shattered. He had been
killed by shrapnel fired from the outer fortifications....

These are the things that happen in histories and stories. They do not
happen at Matching's Easy....

Mr. Van der Pant did not seem to be angry with the Germans. But he
manifestly regarded them as people to be killed. He denounced nothing
that they had done; he related. They were just an evil accident that had
happened to Belgium and mankind. They had to be destroyed. He gave Mr.
Britling an extraordinary persuasion that knives were being sharpened in
every cellar in Brussels and Antwerp against the day of inevitable
retreat, of a resolution to exterminate the invader that was far too
deep to be vindictive.... And the man was most amazingly unconquered.
Mr. Britling perceived the label on his habitual dinner wine with a
slight embarrassment. "Do you care," he asked, "to drink a German wine?
This is Berncasteler from the Moselle." Mr. Van der Pant reflected. "But
it is a good wine," he said. "After the peace it will be Belgian....
Yes, if we are to be safe in the future from such a war as this, we must
have our boundaries right up to the Rhine."

So he sat and talked, flushed and, as it were, elated by the vividness
of all that he had undergone. He had no trace of tragic quality, no hint
of subjugation. But for his costume and his trimmed beard and his
language he might have been a Dubliner or a Cockney.

He was astonishingly cut off from all his belongings. His house in