place was shouting and bawling, every woman almost and every other
man wore a badge--Evesham's badge--and there was no music but a
jangling war-song over and over again, and everywhere men
enlisting, and in the dancing halls they were drilling. The whole
island was awhirl with rumours; it was said, again and again, that
fighting had begun. I had not expected this. I had seen so little
of the life of pleasure that I had failed to reckon with this
violence of the amateurs. And as for me, I was out of it. I was
like the man who might have prevented the firing of a magazine.
The time had gone. I was no one; the vainest stripling with a
badge counted for more than I. The crowd jostled us and bawled in
our ears; that accursed song deafened us; a woman shrieked at my
lady because no badge was on her, and we two went back to our own
place again, ruffled and insulted--my lady white and silent, and I
aquiver with rage. So furious was I, I could have quarrelled with
her if I could have found one shade of accusation in her eyes.

"All my magnificence had gone from me. I walked up and down
our rock cell, and outside was the darkling sea and a light to the
southward that flared and passed and came again.

"'We must get out of this place,' I said over and over. 'I
have made my choice, and I will have no hand in these troubles. I
will have nothing of this war. We have taken our lives out of all
these things. This is no refuge for us. Let us go.'

"And the next day we were already in flight from the war that
covered the world.

"And all the rest was Flight--all the rest was Flight."