“He had some shares in it himself, hadn’t he?” Joan asked.

“Oh, just enough to be of no use,” Mary answered.  “Carleton was rather decent, so far as that part of it was concerned, and insisted on paying him a fair price.  The market value would have been much less; and he wanted to be out of it.”

Joan remained silent.  It made her mad, that a man could be suddenly robbed of fifteen years’ labour:  the weapon that his heart and brain had made keen wrested from his hand by a legal process, and turned against the very principles for which all his life he had been fighting.

“I’m almost more sorry for myself than for him,” said Mary, making a whimsical grimace.  “He will start something else, so soon as he’s got over his first soreness; but I’m too old to dream of another child.”

He came in a little later and, seating himself between them, filled and lighted his pipe.  Looking back, Joan remembered that curiously none of them had spoken.  Mary had turned at the sound of his key in the door.  She seemed to be watching him intently; but it was too dark to notice her expression.  He pulled at his pipe till it was well alight and then removed it.

“It’s war,” he said.

The words made no immediate impression upon Joan.  There had been rumours, threatenings and alarms, newspaper talk.  But so there had been before.  It would come one day:  the world war that one felt was gathering in the air; that would burst like a second deluge on the nations.  But it would not be in our time:  it was too big.  A way out would be found.

“Is there no hope?” asked Mary.

“Yes,” he answered.  “The hope that a miracle may happen.  The Navy’s got its orders.”

And suddenly—­as years before in a Paris music hall—­there leapt to life within Joan’s brain a little impish creature that took possession of her.  She hoped the miracle would not happen.  The little impish creature within her brain was marching up and down beating a drum.  She wished he would stop a minute.  Someone was trying to talk to her, telling her she ought to be tremendously shocked and grieved.  He—­or she, or whatever it was that was trying to talk to her, appeared concerned about Reason and Pity and Universal Brotherhood and Civilization’s clock—­things like that.  But the little impish drummer was making such a din, she couldn’t properly hear.  Later on, perhaps, he would get tired; and then she would be able to listen to this humane and sensible person, whoever it might be.

Mary argued that England could and should keep out of it; but Greyson was convinced it would be impossible, not to say dishonourable:  a sentiment that won the enthusiastic approval of the little drummer in Joan’s brain.  He played “Rule Britannia” and “God Save the King,” the “Marseillaise” and the Russian National hymn, all at the same time.  He would have included “Deutschland uber Alles,” if Joan hadn’t made a supreme effort and stopped him.  Evidently a sporting little devil.  He took himself off into a corner after a time, where he played quietly to himself; and Joan was able to join in the conversation.