Tommy exuded geniality from every pore of his ruddy countenance. He accepted the drink Carr rose to offer. He lifted the glass and smiled at Thompson.
"Here's to success," he toasted. "I believe," he went on between sips of wine, "that things are going to look up finely for us. I sold a truck and two touring cars this afternoon. People seem to be loosening up for some reason. You ought to get your share with the Summit, Wes. Snappy little machine, that."
"You rising business men," Carr drawled, "want to learn to leave your business at the office when you come to my house. Now, we were just discussing the war. What sort of a prophet are you, Tommy? How long will it last? Sophie was wondering if it would be over before all the eligible young men depart across the sea."
"Well," Tommy grinned cheerfully, "I'm no prophet. Not being in the confidence of the Allied command, I can't say. I'd hazard a guess, though, that there'll be plenty of good men left for Sophie to make a choice among. I can pass on another man's prophecy, though. Had a letter from one of my brothers yesterday. He was at Mons, got pinked in the leg, and is now training Territorials. He is sure the grand finale will come about midsummer next. The way he put it sounds logical. Neither side can make headway this winter. Germany has made her maximum effort. If she couldn't beat us when she took the field equipped to the last button she never can. By spring we'll be organized. France and England on the west front. The Russian steam roller on the east. The fleet maintaining the blockade. They can't stand the pressure. It isn't possible. The Hun—confound him—will blow up with a loud bang about next July. That's Ned's say-so, and these line officers are pretty conservative as a rule. War's their business, and they don't nurse illusions about it."
"In the meantime, let's talk about selling automobiles, or the weather, anything but the war," Sophie said suddenly. She pressed a button on the wall. "We're going to drink tea and forget the war," she continued almost defiantly. "I won't ask either of you to stay for dinner, because I'm going out."
Carr's house sat on a slope that dipped down to a long narrow park, and beyond that to a beach on which slow rollers from the outside broke with a sound like the snore of a distant giant. Along that slope and away to the eastward the city was speckled with lights, although it was barely five o'clock, so early does dark close in in that latitude when the year is far spent. And when the maid trundled in a tea-wagon, that vista of twinkling specks, and the more distant flash of Point Atkinson light intermittently stabbing the murky Gulf, was shut away by drawn blinds, and the four of them sat in the cosy room eating little cakes and drinking tea and chatting lightly of things that bulked smaller than the war.
Presently Sam Carr drew Tommy away to the library to look up some legal technicality over which they had fallen into dispute. Sophie lay back in her chair, eyes fixed on the red glow of the embers as if she saw through them and into vast distances beyond.
And Thompson sat covertly looking at her profile, the dull gold of her coiled hair, the red-lipped mouth that was made for kisses and laughter—and he was glad just to look at her, to be near. For he was beginning to say to himself that it was no good fighting against fate, that this girl had put some spell on him from which he would never be wholly free. Nor did he, in that mood, desire to be free. He wanted that spell to grow so strong that in the end it would weave itself about her too, make love beget love. There was quickening in him again that desire to pursue, to conquer, to possess. The ego in him whispered that once for a moment Sophie had rested like a homing bird in his arms, and would, again. But he was not to be betrayed by headlong impulse. The time was not yet. Instinct warned him that in some fashion, vague, unrevealed, he had still to prove himself to Sophie Carr. He was aware intuitively that she weighed him in the balance of cold, critical reason, against any emotional appeal—just as he, himself, was learning to weigh things and men. He did not know this. He only felt it. But he felt sure of his instinct where she was concerned.
And so he was content, for the time, with the privilege of being near her. Some day—
Sophie looked at him. For the moment his own gaze had wandered from her to the fire, his mind yielding tentatively to rose-tinted visions.