"I gave him notice a fortnight ago," carefully adhering to the truth. Then: "I'm going out to Flanders in a few days, as a free-lance journalist."
"Is that allowed?"
"There are ways and means of squaring people—influence ..." said Gareth Temple.
"You'll meet with difficulties."
"I shall be killed."
The quiet certainty of his tones attracted her notice. "Do you want to die?"
He answered with seeming inconsequence: "This war wasn't made for the little people. It's absurd to suppose that a big thing can inflate our natures to correspond. We remain little people hopelessly out of scale with the big thing, instead of little people comfortably tucked up with little things. It's rather unfair—if the war hadn't happened, we need never have been found out. Millions of little people have lived honoured, respected, admired even, because their luck has never sent a European conflict to test them."
It was queer to be confiding thus in Kathleen. But she stimulated him ... as she had always done; she and her like. The sudden startling resolve of the past few moments, startling even to himself, startlingly clear and formulated, was entirely resultant upon her presence; the keen ring of her voice, her aloof walk, sombre hawk's face, and thin eyebrows like curved black scimitars. Spiritually and actually she was worn by her own tempestuous impatience to the finest possible edge. Patricia would one day be like this. He continued to walk beside Kathleen, because of the acute thrill of those moments when she reminded him of Patricia.... And he continued word-spinning in a dizzy triumphant exultation at the ease with which the whole theme of his life was unrolling itself into a final pageantry of speech. He supposed there must be an uncanny finality about this indulgence accorded him in his favourite pastime, since never before had he been able to express himself unhindered by the drag of self-deception. No doubt but that Kathleen was amazed to silence at his power to exhibit himself so stripped of all illusion; he who had always been supremely a figure of illusions. He would amaze her yet more. Tingling with a strange excitement, he went on:
"You were my first love, Kathleen; and Patricia my last. And you were the overture to Patricia, as she was the echo to you. No one in between. Except a dream of the girl I would love to have loved ... weaker than myself, frail and peaceful, a cool shadow-world ... and she would have relied on my strength ... the typical maiden to a knight.... I dreamt of her when I was a boy, reading the 'Idylls of the King,' on the hearthrug in the parlour above the shop.... Well—I dream of her still. And I daresay if we met she could not awaken a single throb in me. Just because I'm a woman-soul myself, Kathleen, I was fated to be magnetically attracted again and again by the bolder and more vital nature in your sex; the strong nature that could not fail to make me miserable directly on finding me out. That other girl—my ideal—she would have admired me. You never admired me, did you, Kathleen?" a fleeting whimsicality in the smile he bestowed on her. "Nor did Patricia ... Patricia....
"I've never been able to impress Patricia. That's why I'm setting off for Flanders now. It was just an impulse that you inspired.... I believe the right one at last. Usually I play about too long with the pretty word-rhythms and word-patterns, and the act comes too late for effect. But not this time. This time I'm leaving out the talk. I shall meet her somewhere in the chaos over there—one does meet people strangely; why, you were only in London for one day! And I shall meet my death, too, somehow, in the chaos over there ... because it's the inevitable end of my round adventure."