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'Yes, I think I could rely on that!' He added: 'All the same I don't wonder that...'

He had been about to say:

'I don't wonder that Sylvia calls you immoral.' For Tietjens' wife alleged that Tietjens was detestable. He bored her, she said, by his silences; when he did speak she hated him for the immorality of his views...But he did not finish his sentence, and Tietjens went on:

'All the same, when the war comes it will be these little snobs who will save England, because they've the courage to know what they want and to say so.'

Macmaster said loftily:

'You're extraordinarily old-fashioned at times, Chrissie. You ought to know as well as I do that a war is impossible--at any rate with this country in it. Simply because...' He hesitated and then emboldened himself: 'We--the circumspect--yes, the circumspect classes, will pilot the nation through the tight places.'

'War, my good fellow,' Tietjens said--the train was slowing down preparatorily to running into Ashford--'is inevitable, and with this country plumb centre in the middle of it. Simply because you fellows are such damn hypocrites. There's not a country in the world that trusts us. We're always, as it were, committing adultery--like your fellow!--with the name of Heaven on our lips.' He was jibing again at the subject of Macmaster's monograph.