Very slowly, indeed, after
two years of solitude, one began to feel the first faint flush of
new and imperial life. One was twenty-five years old, and quite
ready to assert it; some of one's friends were wearing stars on
their collars; some had won stars of a more enduring kind. At
moments one's breath came quick. One began to dream the sensation
of wielding unmeasured power. The sense came, like vertigo, for
an instant, and passed, leaving the brain a little dazed,
doubtful, shy. With an intensity more painful than that of any
Shakespearean drama, men's eyes were fastened on the armies in
the field. Little by little, at first only as a shadowy chance of
what might be, if things could be rightly done, one began to feel
that, somewhere behind the chaos in Washington power was taking
shape; that it was massed and guided as it had not been before.
Men seemed to have learned their business -- at a cost that
ruined -- and perhaps too late. A private secretary knew better
than most people how much of the new power was to be swung in
London, and almost exactly when; but the diplomatic campaign had
to wait for the military campaign to lead. The student could only
study.
Life never could know more than a single such climax. In that
form, education reached its limits. As the first great blows
began to fall, one curled up in bed in the silence of night, to
listen with incredulous hope.
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