He had never got on with his father, and his mother, who had been the victim of various long illnesses during his boyhood, had never, unluckily, meant much to him.

He knew that he was of a very old stock, which had played a long and considerable part in the world; but the fact brought him no thrill.

'That kind of thing is played out,' he thought.

Let his father disinherit him--he was quite indifferent.
Then, as he fell silent beside his father's new secretary, the table vanished.

He saw instead the wide Picardy flats, a group of poplars, a distant wood, and in front a certain hollow strewn with dead and dying men--one figure, in front of the rest, lying face downwards.
The queer twisted forms, the blasted trees, the inexorable horror--the whole vision swept over him again, as it had done in the schoolroom.