'I have made my
choice, and I will have no hand in these troubles. I will have nothing of
this war. We have taken our lives out of all these things. This is no
refuge for us. Let us go.'
"And the next day we were already in flight from the war that covered the
world.
"And all the rest was Flight--all the rest was Flight."
He mused darkly.
"How much was there of it?"
He made no answer.
"How many days?"
His face was white and drawn and his hands were clenched. He took no heed
of my curiosity.
I tried to draw him back to his story with questions.
"Where did you go?" I said.
"When?"
"When you left Capri."
"South-west," he said, and glanced at me for a second. "We went in a
boat."
"But I should have thought an aeroplane?"
"They had been seized."
I questioned him no more. Presently I thought he was beginning again. He
broke out in an argumentative monotone:
"But why should it be? If, indeed, this battle, this slaughter and stress,
_is_ life, why have we this craving for pleasure and beauty? If there
_is_ no refuge, if there is no place of peace, and if all our dreams
of quiet places are a folly and a snare, why have we such dreams? Surely
it was no ignoble cravings, no base intentions, had brought us to this; it
was love had isolated us.
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