Ascher spoke very gravely. Yet, though I had spent months watching the workings of his machine, I could not at the moment share his mood. The war fever was in my blood.
“I should change my metaphor,” said Ascher. “It is not a case of a body where the heart pumps blood into the arteries, but of springs which make brooks, brooks which flow into streams, which in their turn feed great rivers. Now those springs will be frozen. In a million places of which you and I do not even know the names, credit will be frozen suddenly. There will be no water in the brooks and streams. The rivers will run dry.”
Ascher had asked for my sympathy. I did my best to give it.
“It’s a tremendous responsibility for you,” I said, “and men like you. But you’ll pull through. The whole thing can’t collapse, simply can’t. It’s too big.”
“Perhaps,” said Ascher, “perhaps. But it is not that side of the matter which I wish to speak to you about. You will forgive me if I say that you can hardly understand or appreciate it. What I want to say to you is something more personal. I want”—Ascher smiled wanly—“to talk about myself.”
“You stand to lose heavily,” I said. “I see that.”
“I do not know,” said Ascher, “whether at the end of a week I shall own one single penny in the world. I may very well have lost everything. But if that were all I should not trouble much. Merely to lose money—but——”
He stopped speaking, and for a long while sat silent The clock behind me chimed again. It was half past two.
“I suppose,” said Ascher, “that you have always thought of me as an Englishman.”
“To tell you the truth,” I said, “I’ve never thought whether you are an Englishman or not. I wasn’t interested. I suppose I took it for granted that you were English.”