"Yes, expecting you."
The girl glowed. No more urging needed.
Napier had, even then, a fairly shrewd idea of who was expecting them. And he had let her go without asking her the question he meant to ask! Was it worth while, after all? Wasn't it enough to know that since Greta von Schwarzenberg had left bills for furs, and trunks, and clothing to be paid for by her friends, she would inevitably leave a still heavier account to be paid for by her enemy? Napier "paid" every time he met Nan Ellis, and he knew he paid.
A deep disheartenment laid hold of him. His only escape from it was work. Enough of that and to spare. He had difficulty in finding time for drill, even at "the oddest hours"—odd for a young gentleman of his habits. Yet for the work that lay closest to his heart odd hours were all that Gavan had. This came about partly by reason of Sir William's increased need for, and increased dependence on, his secretary, partly because of his impatience with the desire of men like Gavan to join their university corps, or some other O. T. C. "and waste their time playing at soldiers." It was no good for Gavan to remind Sir William of the lack of officers to fill the gaps abroad, and the lack of instructors at home. "By the time you'd be able to instruct anybody the war'll be over!"
And still Gavan managed double duty during the last weeks of the fateful old year and the early days of the problematic new. The thoughts of people at home, after following day by day, hour by hour, the bloody November struggle for Ypres, settled now on those survivors who were making their first acquaintance with the stark misery of winter in the trenches. It stood to reason this sort of thing couldn't go on.
The next thing would be peace.
Those who believed in Kitchener agreed that no man as shrewd as K. of K. had ever made a prophecy so absurd on the face of it as that alleged dictum of his, "The war will last three years." The only way of understanding it was to interpret it as a recruiting call, and a final flourish in the face of the Teuton. K. of K. must have 100,000 men. Have 'em at once, too. Let the Germans put that in their pipes and smoke it!
Meanwhile the Germans were struggling for Calais and bombarding Rheims, and over on the other side of the world President Wilson talked peace.
Napier watched the gradual khaki-ing that came over the male population of the United Kingdom; watched regiments marching by day to the tune of "Tipperary," marching by night very quietly, on each man's shoulder a long white bundle, like little canvas bolsters—men on their way to entrain for the front, following in the wake of that fourth of the Expeditionary Army which had already fallen. With as little publicity as possible, hospitals multiplied. People began to look upon wounded soldiers in the streets without that shuddering, first passion of pity, that mingled gratitude and anger at the price exacted of those maimed men. "The price of our present, and our children's future safety," said the many. "The price of our past blundering," said the few. Of these, Julian, in season and out of season, rubbed in the unwelcome truth.