"But what--what house is collapsing?"
"The house all round us, the house of this particular form of
civilization. It's sliding down. It's been sliding down for years. You
might say that it began to slide down as soon as it was put up, because
it was wrongly constructed. A building full of flaws begins to settle
before they get the roof on, and though it may stand for years the
ultimate crash is only a question of time. War came as soon as our
building began to split; the building didn't begin to split because the
war came. It was splitting anyhow."
"That seems to me--" he sought for a sufficiently condemnatory
word--"that seems to me sheer socialism."
"Oh, I don't think it is. The Socialists wouldn't say so. It isn't
anything in particular. It's just--just fact."
"Only?" Vio smiled, with her delicate, penetrating sarcasm.
"Only," I echoed. "But as we belong to a world that doesn't like fact
it isn't of much importance."
Bewilderment brought a pained expression to the handsome, rather stupid,
countenance.
"What the--what on earth do you mean by that?"
"Only that we've a genius for dodging issues and shutting our eyes to
what's straight before us."
"Do you mean the ruin straight before us?"
"Not necessarily, Vio. The collapse of this particular form of
civilization wouldn't mean ruin, because we'd get a better form. I
suppose it's coming into existence now."
"I don't know about that," the colonel objected. "As far as I see,
things are pretty much the same as they've always been, and they're
getting more so."
"I suppose none of us sees more than we have our eyes open to. Things
of the greatest importance to us happen, and we don't know that they're
going on."
"I hope that that kind of song and dance isn't going on--the breakdown
of our civilization. It wasn't for that we gave 'em hell at
Chateau-Thierry."
"Oh, none of us knows what anything is for, except in the vaguest way.
All we can do is to plod ahead and follow the thread of flame."
"Follow the thread of what?"