However, he left the room and for a fortnight or so he wasn't invited--Wasn't she wonderful--Queen Victoria ?" And so, by light transitions, to the Prince of Wales at the front, and thus into the trenches.

And then Herbertson was on the subject he was obsessed by.

He had come, unconsciously, for this and this only, to talk war to Lilly: or at Lilly.

For the latter listened and watched, and said nothing.

As a man at night helplessly takes a taxi to find some woman, some prostitute, Herbertson had almost unthinkingly got into a taxi and come battering at the door in Covent Garden, only to talk war to Lilly, whom he knew very little.