'Good. Then my first order will try you pretty hard. For I have
no orders to give you except to bid you go and steep yourself in a
particular kind of life. Your first duty is to get "atmosphere", as
your friend Peter used to say. Oh, I will tell you where to go and
how to behave. But I can't bid you do anything, only live idly with
open eyes and ears till you have got the "feel" of the situation.'

She stopped and laid a hand on my arm.

'It won't be easy. It would madden me, and it will be a far
heavier burden for a man like you. You have got to sink down
deep into the life of the half-baked, the people whom this war
hasn't touched or has touched in the wrong way, the people who
split hairs all day and are engrossed in what you and I would call
selfish little fads. Yes. People like my aunts and Launcelot, only for
the most part in a different social grade. You won't live in an old
manor like this, but among gimcrack little "arty" houses. You will
hear everything you regard as sacred laughed at and condemned,
and every kind of nauseous folly acclaimed, and you must hold
your tongue and pretend to agree. You will have nothing in the
world to do except to let the life soak into you, and, as I have said,
keep your eyes and ears open.'

'But you must give me some clue as to what I should be looking for?'

'My orders are to give you none. Our chiefs - yours and mine -
want you to go where you are going without any kind of _parti _pris.
Remember we are still in the intelligence stage of the affair. The
time hasn't yet come for a plan of campaign, and still less for action.'