When the Battle of the Marne was past history and the opposing armies had dug themselves in and the ghastly business of the trenches had begun, Thompson was more than ever immersed in pursuit of the main chance, for he was then engaged in organizing Summit Motors in Vancouver.  There had been a period when his optimism about his prospects had suffered a relapse.  He had half-expected that Canada’s participation in that devil’s dance across the sea would spoil things commercially.  There had been a sort of temporary demoralization on both sides of the line, at first.  But that was presently adjusted.  Through Tommy Ashe and other sources he learned that business in Vancouver was actually looking up because of the war.

He was a little surprised that Tommy was not off to the war.  Tommy loved his England.  He was forever singing England’s praises.  England was “home” to Tommy Ashe always.  It was only a name to Thompson.  And he thought, when he thought about it at all, that if England’s need was not great enough to call her native-born, that the Allies must have the situation well in hand; as the papers had a way of stating.

He had other fish to fry, himself, without rushing off to the front.  As a matter of fact he never consciously considered the question of going to the front.  That never occurred to him.  When he did think of the war he thought of it impersonally, as a busy man invariably does think of matters which do not directly concern him.

What did concern him most vitally was the project he had in hand.  And next to those ambitions, material considerations, his fancy touched shyly now and then upon Sophie Carr.

CHAPTER XXI

THE RENEWED TRIANGLE

Even after Thompson reached Vancouver and the visible signs of a nation at war confronted him he experienced no patriotic thrill.  After all, there was no great difference, on the surface, between San Francisco and Vancouver, save that Vancouver accepted as a matter of course the principle that when the mother country was at war Canada was also a belligerent and committed to support.  Barring the recruiting offices draped in the Allied colors, squads of men drilling on certain public squares, successive tag days for the Red Cross, the Patriotic fund and such organizations, the war did not flaunt itself in men’s faces.  The first hot wave of feeling had passed.  The thing had become a grim business to be gone about in grim determination.  And side by side with those unostensible preparations that kept a stream of armed men passing quietly overseas, the normal business of a city waxed and throve in the old accustomed way.  Thompson’s most vivid impression was of accelerating business activity, and that was his chief concern.  The other thing, which convulsed a far-off continent, was too distant to be a reality—­like an earthquake in Japan, a reported famine in India.