The tone nettled Napier. "You seem to have forgotten your own suspicions of that woman."
"They were never of that sort, thank God!" Julian flung out. "I didn't like the idea of Nan's friend carrying on a doubtful love affair—But that's all pettiness. The awful actualities of war have brought fine things to the surface in Greta von Schwarzenberg's character."
Napier told himself that he knew what had been brought to the surface, and what effect that bringing had had on Julian.
The spectacle of injustice, or even the danger of injustice, would at any time make Julian Grant forget his own interests and yours and anybody's who wasn't being actively oppressed.
"Have you been to Gull Island since?"
"I've had no time for picnicking," Julian answered shortly.
"Well, since you're championing Schwarzenberg, it's your business to see she isn't made a tool of. You heard how the Pforzheims vanished. I've wondered,"—Napier found it curiously difficult to go on. There was a quality—he had noticed it before—a something in Julian's frankness which put astuteness out of countenance, something that made suspicion seem not only vulgar but melodramatic. Napier felt obliged to throw a dash of whimsicality, of confessed extravagance, into the speculation, "Whether the reason we weren't allowed to land on Gull Island was those Pforzheims. They may have made an emergency camp out of your Smugglers' Cave."
Julian's weary disgust lightened a little. "I had no notion you were so romantic, Gavan."
"Very well, then. If you won't look into the matter, I must get some one else. And set afoot a new crop of rumors. Risk involving Sir William in responsibility for—"
"Oh, see here! I'll go, and hold an inquisition on the gulls and cormorants."