CHAPTER NINETEEN
Conward paused to speak to Irene before leaving the house.
"I owe you my good wishes," he said. "And I give them most frankly, although, perhaps, with more difficulty than you suppose."
"You are very good, Mr. Conward," she acknowledged.
"I could not wish you anything but happiness," he returned. "And had I been so fortunate as Elden, in making your acquaintance first, I might have hoped to contribute to your happiness more directly than I can under the present circumstances." He was speaking in his low, sedulous notes, and his words sent the girl's blood rushing in a strange mixture of gratification and anger. The tribute he implied—that he himself would have been glad to have been her suitor—was skilfully planned to appeal to her vanity, and her anger was due to its success. She told herself she should not listen to such words; she should hate to hear such words. And yet she listened to them, and was not sure that she hated them. She could only say, "You are very good, Mr. Conward."
He pressed her hand at the door, and again that strange mixture of emotions surged through her.
Conward proceeded to the business section of the town, well pleased with the evening's events. He found his way impeded by crowds in front of the newspaper offices. He had paid little attention to the progress of the war scare, attributing it to the skilful publicity of interests connected with the manufacture of armaments. To the last he had not believed that war was possible. "Nobody wants to fight," he had assured his business acquaintances. "Even the armament people don't want to fight. All they want is to frighten more money out of the taxpayers of Europe." To Conward this explanation seemed very complete. It covered the whole ground and left nothing to be said.
But to-night he was aware of a keener tension in the crowd atmosphere. They were good natured crowds, to be sure; laughing, and cheering, and making sallies of heavy wit; but they were in some way more intense than he had ever seen before. There was no fear of war; there was, rather, an adventurous spirit which seemed to fear that the affair would blow over, as had so many affairs in the past, and all the excitement go for nothing. That war, if it came to war, could last, no one dreamed; it would be a matter of a few weeks, a few months, at the most, until a thoroughly whipped Germany would retire behind the Rhine to plan ways of raising the indemnity which outraged civilization would demand. Conward elbowed his way through the crowds, smiling, in his superior knowledge, over their excitement. Newspapers must have headlines.
At his office he used a telephone. Then he walked to a restaurant, where, after a few minutes, he was joined by a young woman. They took a table in a box. Supper was disposed of, and the young woman began to grow impatient.