ONE:Under the circumstances he hardly knew what held him back, what made the whole idea vaguely repugnant to him. Surely it could not be his feeling for Alice Jury. The terrible thought suggested itself that his love for Alice would survive all the outward signs of its demolition, that though beaten and killed and destroyed it would haunt him disembodied. That was the secret of its powerits utter lack of corporiety, its independence of the material things a strong man could bend to his will, so that, as it were, one could never lay hands on it, but chased it for ever like a ghost.BOOK V ALMOST UNDER Chapter 1
TWO:That summer the country was shaken by rumours of war, Reuben; having more leisure on his hands, spent it in the study of his daily paper. He could now read simple sentences, and considered himself quite an educated man. When war at last broke out in South Africa he was delighted. It was the best of all possible wars, organised by the best of all possible Governments, under the best of all possible ministers. Chamberlain became his heronot that he understood or sympathised with his Imperialism, but he admired him for his attitude towards the small nations. He hated all talk about preserving the weaksuch was not nature's way, the way of farms; there the weakest always went to the wall, and he could not see why different methods should obtain in the world at large. If Reuben had been a politician he would have kept alive no sick man of Europe, protected no down-trodden Balkan States. One of the chief reasons why he wanted to see the Boers wiped out was because they had muddled their colonisation, failed to establish themselves, or to make of the arid veldt what he had made of Boarzell.
