Julian looked at her curiously.

“You have ideas, Miss Abbeway.”

“So unusual in a woman!” she mocked.  “Do you notice how every one is trying to avoid the subject of the war?  I give them another half-course, don’t you?  I am sure they cannot keep it up.”

“They won’t go the distance,” Julian whispered.  “Listen.”

“The question to be considered,” Lord Shervinton pronounced, “is not so much when the war will be over as what there is to stop it?  That is a point which I think we can discuss without inviting official indiscretions.”

“If other means fail,” declared the Bishop, “Christianity will stop it.  The conscience of the world is already being stirred.”

“Our enemies,” the Earl pronounced confidently from his place at the head of the table, “are already a broken race.  They are on the point of exhaustion.  Austria is, if possible, in a worse plight.  That is what will end the war—­the exhaustion of our opponents.”

“The deciding factor,” Mr. Hannaway Wells put in, with a very non-committal air, “will probably be America.  She will bring her full strength into the struggle just at the crucial moment.  She will probably do what we farther north have as yet failed to do:  she will pierce the line and place the German armies in Flanders in peril.”

The Cabinet Minister’s views were popular.  There was a little murmur of approval, something which sounded almost like a purr of content.  It was just one more expression of that strangely discreditable yet almost universal failing,—­the over-reliance upon others.  The quiet remark of the man who suddenly saw fit to join in the discussion struck a chilling and a disturbing note.

“There is one thing which could end the war at any moment,” Mr. Stenson said, leaning a little forward, “and that is the will of the people.”

There was perplexity as well as discomfiture in the minds of his hearers.

“The people?” Lord Shervinton repeated.  “But surely the people speak through the mouths of their rulers?”

“They have been content to, up to the present,” the Prime Minister agreed, “but Europe may still see strange and dramatic events before many years are out.”

“Do go on, please,” the Countess begged.

Mr. Stenson shook his head.

“Even as a private individual I have said more than I intended,” he replied.  “I have only one thing to say about the war in public, and that is that we are winning, that we must win, that our national existence depends upon winning, and that we shall go on until we do win.  The obstacles between us and victory, which may remain in our minds, are not to be spoken of.”

There was a brief and somewhat uncomfortable pause.  It was understood that the subject was to be abandoned.  Julian addressed a question to the Bishop across the table.  Lord Maltenby consulted Doctor Lennard as to the date of the first Punic War.  Mr. Stenson admired the flowers.  Catherine, who had been sitting with her eyes riveted upon the Prime Minister, turned to her neighbour.