"I am content to be used. I ask nothing better."
More quietly, more gravely, Napier agreed it was a thing about which a man must be his own judge. But by so much he must hesitate to judge for others. "The Pacifists are making a cat's-paw of you, I tell you. If you like that for yourself ..." he shrugged. Then, abandoning his momentary return to the laissez-aller form of other days, he looked straight into Julian's eyes and with an earnestness that would have enlightened any one but Grant, "I don't know how you reconcile it to your conscience to involve a girl in such ..." he broke off. As Julian stood waiting serenely: "A girl as young and as far away from home—"
"Nan! Oh, you don't know Nan!"
Another time: "Why drag her into—all this?" Gavan demanded. "It isn't as if she could do anything."
"Oh, can't she!"
"What, in the name of—"
Although Julian wouldn't answer, an opportunity came to put the question to Nan. Napier found himself sitting opposite her at dinner in Lowndes Square on the night following the House of Commons debate on German spies. That topic, in the forefront of every mind, was ignored by tacit consent. Conversation fell for a few memorable minutes on the appalling statement, just issued officially, that there had been 57,000 casualties in the British Expeditionary Force up to the end of October. How many had fallen since in the bloody struggle about Ypres, fiercest of the war, and how many on either side would survive the stark misery of that first little-prepared-for winter in the trenches, no one present had heart to ask. But the question, urged in print and cried from platforms by Julian and his friends, was there in the girl's face.
Sir William seemed to answer by saying the one redeeming feature of the business was that it was too awful to last. The Germans must see they have failed.