"Nothing, Arnold, nothing. That's the trouble; you have to sit still and watch this wrecking of civilization or else get out and take a hack at the thing yourself. I can't do that; not unless I have to." He paused. "I've had a good time in this life; things have always come easily—"
Sybil Latham was regarding him contemplatively.
"Yes," she murmured, "I don't know a man who has impressed me as so thoroughly enjoying life as you, Nick—"
Colcord stared at her a moment.
"Well, I do," he replied at length. "But I want to say this right here: if some person or presence, some supernatural being, say, should come here to-night, at this table, and tell me that by giving up my life right now I would, through that act, bring an end to—"
"Nick!" Evelyn Colcord's voice was poignantly sharp.
"If through that little sacrifice the blood glut in Europe would end, I'd do it cheerfully, joyfully, in a minute."
Simec was gazing at the speaker with half-closed eyes; the others, in thrall of his words, were staring at the table or at one another.
"What a thought!" Mrs. Allison glanced at him curiously. "Coming from you, of all men, Nick!"
"I wonder if I could say that?" Jerry Dane sank down in his chair, put his hands in his pockets, and gazed sombrely up at the ceiling. "By George! I wish I could—but I can't."