by dozens, those with whom his life had been spent--frequenters of the
restaurant, the racecourse, the tavern, and the theatre--followed one
another in a headlong race to the unknown. His brain reeled under
successive shocks. He was awestruck by the appalling suddenness of death
and destruction. Daring no inquiry, avoiding those whose faces he dreaded
to read, he forsook his former luxurious resorts and almost slunk into
the corners of obscure eating-places and cafes in Soho.

Bobby will not easily forget those first few weeks of the War.

Then gradually he pulled himself together, and unable to escape the
influence by which he was surrounded, he tried to take his little part in
the common effort. But his training was against him. At forty-five years
of age it is no easy task for any man to put the past behind him and
begin afresh; for Bobby to have done so would have needed a strength of
will and character which he never at any time in his life possessed. He
did succeed in getting various jobs, but one after another he threw them
up. In each case he found a suitable excuse for himself and an
explanation for his friends; there was always some insuperable reason why
he was "obliged to chuck it," and he finally resigned himself to a form
of existence which differed from his former one, but only in degree.

In the early months of the War, before restrictions were placed upon
ordinary travellers, Bobby began going to Paris again, for although he
felt if possible even more there than in London the changes brought about
by the War, the old habit was too strong to resist; the journey itself
provided a reaction against the depression which overshadowed him.

Some time after von Kluck had been hurled back from the gates of
Paris--it must have been shortly after the return of the French