He resisted the intimations of the fall of Brussels and the appearance of the Germans at Dinant.  The first real check to his excessive anticipations of victory for the Allies came with the sudden reappearance of Mr. Direck in a state of astonishment and dismay at Matching’s Easy.  He wired from the Strand office, “Coming to tell you about things,” and arrived on the heels of his telegram.

He professed to be calling upon Mr. and Mrs. Britling, and to a certain extent he was; but he had a quick eye for the door or windows; his glance roved irrelevantly as he talked.  A faint expectation of Cissie came in with him and hovered about him, as the scent of violets follows the flower.

He was, however, able to say quite a number of things before Mr. Britling’s natural tendency to do the telling asserted itself.

“My word,” said Mr. Direck, “but this is some war.  It is going on regardless of every decent consideration.  As an American citizen I naturally expected to be treated with some respect, war or no war.  That expectation has not been realised....  Europe is dislocated....  You have no idea here yet how completely Europe is dislocated....

“I came to Europe in a perfectly friendly spirit—­and I must say I am surprised.  Practically I have been thrown out, neck and crop.  All my luggage is lost.  Away at some one-horse junction near the Dutch frontier that I can’t even learn the name of.  There’s joy in some German home, I guess, over my shirts; they were real good shirts.  This tweed suit I have is all the wardrobe I’ve got in the world.  All my money—­good American notes—­well, they laughed at them.  And when I produced English gold they suspected me of being English and put me under arrest....  I can assure you that the English are most unpopular in Germany at the present time, thoroughly unpopular....  Considering that they are getting exactly what they were asking for, these Germans are really remarkably annoyed....  Well, I had to get the American consul to advance me money, and I’ve done more waiting about and irregular fasting and travelling on an empty stomach and viewing the world, so far as it was permitted, from railway sidings—­for usually they made us pull the blinds down when anything important was on the track—­than any cow that ever came to Chicago....  I was handed as freight—­low grade freight....  It doesn’t bear recalling.”

Mr. Direck assumed as grave and gloomy an expression as the facial habits of years would permit.

“I tell you I never knew there was such a thing as war until this happened to me.  In America we don’t know there is such a thing.  It’s like pestilence and famine; something in the story books.  We’ve forgotten it for anything real.  There’s just a few grandfathers go around talking about it.  Judge Holmes and sage old fellows like him.  Otherwise it’s just a game the kids play at....  And then suddenly here’s everybody running about in the streets—­hating