of all, should I go back, go back for all the rest of my days to toil

and stress, insults and perpetual dissatisfaction, simply to save

hundreds of millions of common people, whom I did not love, whom

too often I could do no other than despise, from the stress and

anguish of war and infinite misrule? And after all I might fail.

THEY all sought their own narrow ends, and why should not I--why

should not I also live as a man? And out of such thoughts her voice

summoned me, and I lifted my eyes.



"I found myself awake and walking. We had come out above the Pleasure

City, we were near the summit of Monte Solaro and looking towards the

bay. It was the late afternoon and very clear. Far away to the left

Ischia hung in a golden haze between sea. and sky, and Naples was

coldly white against the hills, and before us was Vesuvius with a

tall and slender streamer feathering at last towards the south, and

the ruins of Torre dell' Annunziata and Castellamare glittering and

near."



I interrupted suddenly: "You have been to Capri, of course?"



"Only in this dream," he said, "only in this dream. All across

the bay beyond Sorrento were the floating palaces of the Pleasure City

moored and chained. And northward were the broad floating stages

that received the aeroplanes. Aeroplanes fell out of the sky every

afternoon, each bringing its thousands of pleasure-seekers from

the uttermost parts of the earth to Capri and its delights. All

these things, I say, stretched below.



"But we noticed them only incidentally because of an unusual sight

that evening had to show. Five war aeroplanes that had long slumbered

useless in the distant arsenals of the Rhinemouth were manoeuvring

now in the eastward sky. Evesham had astonished the world by

producing them and others, and sending them to circle here and

there. It was the threat material in the great game of bluff he was

playing, and it had taken even me by surprise. He was one of those

incredibly stupid energetic people who seem sent by Heaven to create

disasters. His energy to the first glance seemed so wonderfully

like capacity! But he had no imagination, no invention, only a stupid,

vast, driving force of will, and a mad faith in his stupid idiot

'luck' to pull him through. I remember how we stood out upon

the headland watching the squadron circling far away, and how

I weighed the full meaning of the sight, seeing clearly the way

things must go. And then even it was not too late. I might have

gone back, I think, and saved the world. The people of the north

would follow me, I knew, granted only that in one thing I respected

their moral standards. The east and south would trust me as they would

trust no other northern man. And I knew I had only to put it to her

and she would have let me go. . . . Not because she did not love me!



"Only I did not want to go; my will was all the other way about.



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