Walter said:
‘I know.’.
He held me tight, and I pressed close up to him. The beating of his heart throbbed through me again, like the pulse of the world. And all I had, seemed dearer than ever before, as I realized that it could be lost.
I said:
‘Oh, Walter, do they love as we do? Do you think, many of them do?’
And he answered very softly:
‘Yes. Hundreds of thousands of them do.’
V
The next morning Walter walked over to Alston for more news. He brought back more papers, but nothing definite besides. The people in the town were talking about war, he said, telegrams were put up outside the Town Hall. Two days later he went over to Alston again. The exact moments at which it became credible, probable, inevitable, that England would fight too, I cannot remember at all.
The postman, who brought the post on Monday, stopped me at the gate with news of the Advance into Belgium.