When Newcomb had finished his four miles with the second officer and the congressman from Vermont, he came to a stop by Grant's corner in time to hear the girl break into the middle of something he was saying and urge Grant to go below. He was to try to sleep off his headache; anyway, "make up a little for loss of rest before—before—" she stumbled and looked away an instant. A world of trouble was in the face she turned again to watch the slight figure go swaying down the deck and catch at the jamb of the door to steady himself an instant before he disappeared into the companionway. He had left a book open on his rug. On the deck, all around his chair, lay the modern exemplars of that literature of peace which seems, like the old, to bring the sword.
Newcomb's eye roved once again over titles in English and German, and from the scattered incrimination he looked at the face of the girl.
"I seem to have noticed that these sentiments don't stir you to much enthusiasm."
"They are worthy of enthusiasm," she answered, as though parrying an attack on Julian behind his back.
"Why do you make phrases?" Newcomb demanded.
"I don't." Whether her quickened look sprang from a pricked conscience Newcomb couldn't be sure. "Well, aren't they full"—her eyes swept the litter of books and papers—"full of fine and splendid things? You know they are. Only—"
"Only?"
She drew herself up, and the tight-pressed lips parted to say: "However much we believe them, if the house was on fire, we couldn't think about these things. The house is on fire. I can't think about—anything except saving the house and the people who are being burnt."
"Doesn't Mr. Grant tell you that those are exactly his aims—'to save the house' and 'to save the people'?"
"Yes," she owned sadly; "he thinks about saving everything except himself." She stopped abruptly, frightened at having made an admission which may have implied much or little. She studied Newcomb a moment with a gaze that made him long to say: "Yes, believe in me. Why shouldn't you?"