"If politicians don't know that, they'll learn it to their cost. English participation in this war is impossible."
"So little impossible," Sir William barked back, "that we'll be in it up to the neck."
There was a moment's hush in the hall, before everybody, except Miss Greta, began to talk at once. Miss Greta never lifted her head. She did not so much as lift her eyes. Napier saw that she was following the success of her ruse with an intensity that held her hands immovable, as though the rapid fingers had been caught, tied fast, in those "field-gray" filaments she wove, as though her palms had been skewered through by the shining steel of her long needles. They stuck out at right angles, seeming to transfix the rigid, death-white hands.
"Never! never!" Julian had cried out at the top of his voice.
"And if we weren't in it," Sir William shouted, "we'd be wiped off the map. What's more, we'd deserve to be."
"I tell you," Julian vociferated, "England will never consent to be dragged into this quarrel."
"England won't be dragged in. She will go in because it would be a shame to keep out. She is in!"
Napier sat damning himself with uncommon vigor. Idiot! that he hadn't foreseen the Von Schwarzenberg's agile apprehension of this new use to which Nanchen's lover might be put. Too late the realization that her baulked eagerness for official news had made her egg on Julian to engage his fellow Scot at their real "national game"—which isn't golf at all. Debate's the name of it. Those two played it with passion. Nothing could stop them now. Sir William trumpeted at Julian, and Julian skirled wildly back. The hall was in confusion.
"You said England never would," Nan cried across to Miss Greta.
"I said she wouldn't be so ill-advised," was the barely audible answer.