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"To Germany?"

"It goes to whatever country bids the highest price for it; and Germany is in the market. So if your friend is brought down by a faster airplane, you'll know the reason. Also you'll know why your father keeps urging you not to tear your heart out over this war."

"But, Robbie!" The son's voice rose with excitement. "Something ought to be done about a thing like that!"

"Who's going to do it?"

"But it's treason!"

"It's business."

"Who are the people that are doing it?"

"A big concern, with a lot of stockholders; its shares are on the market, anybody can buy them who has the money. If you look up the board of directors, you'll find familiar names - that is, if you follow such things. You find Lord Booby, and you say: 'Zaharoff!' You see the Due de Pumpkin, and you say: 'Schneider,' or perhaps 'de Wendel.' You see Isaac Steinberg, or some such name, and you say: 'Rothschild.' They have their directors in hundreds of different companies, all tied together in a big net - steel, oil, coal, chemicals, shipping, and, above all, banks. When you see those names, you might as well butt your brains out against a stone wall as try to stop them, or even to expose them - because they own the newspapers."

"But, Robbie," protested the youth, "doesn't it make any difference to those men whether the Germans take France?"

"They're building big industry, and they'll own it and run it. Whatever government comes in will have to have money, and will make terms with them, and business will go on as it's always done. It's a steam roller; and what I'm telling my son is, be on it and not under it!"

IX

The English and the French had made for themselves a sort of chicken run across the English Channel; a wide lane, fenced with heavy steel netting hung from two lines of buoys, and protected by mines. Back and forth through that lane went the troopships, the hospital ships, the freighters, the packet boats with passengers. Up and down the lines patrolled torpedo boats and destroyers, mine sweepers and trawlers; lookouts swept the sea with glasses, and gunners stood by their quick-firers, ready at a moment's notice to swing them into action. Overhead were airplanes humming, and silver blimps slowly gliding. The submarine campaign was at its peak, and the Allies were going back to the ancient system of convoys for merchant ships. They were doing it here, with fleets of slow-moving vessels laden with coal for France, escorted by armed trawlers.

At night the destroyers raced up and down, their searchlights flashing, making the scene bright almost as day. But the packet boats showed no lights, and passengers were not allowed on deck; you went on board after dark, and were escorted to your stateroom, and advised to sleep with your clothes on, and be sure to practice adjusting the life preserver which was overhead in your berth. Your porthole was sealed tightly with a dark cover, and to open it or show a light was a prison offense. You heard the sounds of departure, and felt the vibration of the screw and the tossing of the vessel. You slept, if your nerves were sound, and when you woke up you were in England, if your luck was reasonably good.

London in wartime was full of bustle, serious but not afraid. "Never say die," was the motto. England would follow her usual rule of losing every battle but the last. The theaters and the cinemas were crowded. Everybody was at work, both men and women; hours were long and wages high; the people of the slums had enough to eat for the first time in their lives. Lanny wondered: was that the solution to the problem of poverty and unemployment - to put everybody at work trying to blow some other people up?

Robbie had important men waiting to see him. There was no way for Lanny to help him; no more codes or ciphers now - whatever cablegrams you sent had to be in plain words, and signed by your full name; better not use any words the censor didn't know, and not too many figures. Robbie told a story about a man who tried to cable that he had purchased 12 462 873 sables; the military intelligence department got busy to find out how he had managed to get more sables than there were in the world.

Lanny had two young ladies to call on. Rosemary first, of course. She had got her heart's desire, and was working as a nurse. They called her a "student," but there wasn't much difference in these days, you went right to work, and learned by doing. She was in a big hospital which until recently had been a school. Her hours were long, and leave "was hard to get; but when you are the granddaughter of an earl, you can manage things in England, even in wartime.

Toward sundown he went to meet her, expecting to see her in a nurse's costume of white; but she had changed to a blue chiffon dress and a little straw hat with blue cornflowers in it. The sight of her started something to tingling inside him. How lovely life could be, even with death ruling the world!

They walked in a near-by park, and she tried her best to be cool and matter of fact. But there was something between her and this young American that wasn't easy to control. They sat on a bench, and Lanny looked at her, and saw that she was afraid to meet his eyes, and that her lips were trembling.

"Have you missed me a little, Rosemary?"

"More than a little."

"I haven't been able to think about anybody else."

"Let's not talk about it, Lanny."

So he chatted for a while, telling her about Rick's brief holiday in Paris. He talked about his coming trip to America, and the reasons for it. "My father says we're surely coming into the war." Congress was then in session, and a fierce debate was going on; there might be a vote at any hour.

"Better late than never," replied Rosemary. The English in those days had become extremely impatient with the letter-writing of President Wilson.

"You mustn't blame me for it," said he. "But if we do come in, things will change quickly." He waited a reasonable time, then asked, with a smile: "If we do, Rosemary, will that make any difference in the way your parents feel about us colonials?"

"All that's so complicated, Lanny. Let's talk about nice agreeable things."

"The nicest agreeable thing I know is sitting on a park bench with the twilight falling about her and an evening star right in front of her eyes, and I haven't the least desire to talk about anything else. Tell me, darling: has there been any other man in your heart in the past eleven months?"

"There are hundreds of them, Lanny. I'm trying to help our poor boys back to life - or ease them out of it not too horribly."

"I know, dear," he said. "I've lived in the house with a war casualty for more than two years. But one can't work all the time, surely; one has to have a little fun."

Lanny didn't know England very well. He knew that the "lower orders" lay around in the parks in broad daylight; but just how dark did it have to be for a member of the nobility to permit a young man to take her hand, or put his arm around her on a park bench? He tried gently, and she did not repel him. Presently they were sitting close together, and the old mysterious spell renewed itself. Perhaps an hour passed; then he said: "Can't we go somewhere, Rosemary?"

Robbie had said: "Take her to one of the cheaper hotels; they don't ask questions." Robbie was practical on the subject of sex, as upon all others. He said there were three things a young fellow had to look out for: he mustn't get any girl into trouble; he mustn't get mixed up with any married woman unless he was sure the husband didn't care; and he mustn't get any disease. When Lanny had reassured him on these points, he said: "If you don't show up tonight, I won't worry."

X

So Lanny and Rosemary went strolling; and when they came to a place where they weren't apt to meet any of their fashionable friends, they went in, and he registered as Mr. and Mrs. Brown, and paid in advance, and no questions were asked. When they lay in the embrace which was so full of rapture for them both, they forgot the sordid surroundings, they forgot everything except that their time was short. Lanny was going out to face the submarines on the open ocean, and Rosemary was going to France, where the screaming shells paid no heed to a red cross on a woman's arm.

"Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old time is still a flying." Thus the English poet. The German has said: " Pf l ь cket die Rose, Eh' sie verbl ь ht ." So there was one thing about which the two nations could agree. In countless cheap hotels in Berlin, as in London, the advice was being followed; and the wartime custom was no different in Paris - if you could accept the testimony of Napoleon Bonaparte, who had stood on the field of Eylau, observing the heaps of the slaughtered and remarking: "One night in Paris will remedy all that."

Their happiness was long-enduring, and nothing in the outside world was permitted to disturb it. Not even loud banging noises, all over the city - one of them very close by. Lanny made a joke of it: "I hope that's not some morals police force after us." The girl explained that those were anti-aircraft warnings, made by "maroons," a kind of harmless bomb made of heavy paper wrapped with twine.

They lay still in the dark and listened. Presently came louder explosions, and some of them were near, too. "Anti-aircraft guns," said Rosemary; she knew all the sounds. There came dull, heavy crashes, and she told him those were the bombs. "You don't have to worry unless it's a direct hit."

"You surely can't worry if it is," said Lanny. It was his first time under fire, and he wanted to take it in the English manner.

"About as much risk as in a thunderstorm," said Rosemary. "The silly fools think they can frighten us by wrecking a house here and there and killing half a dozen harmless people in their beds."

"I suppose those'll be planes?" asked the youth.

"From occupied Belgium. The Zepps have stopped coming entirely."

The uproar grew louder, and presently there was a sharp cracking sound, and some of the glass in the window of their room fell onto the floor. That was getting sort of close! "A piece of shrapnel," said Rosemary. "They don't have much force, because the air resistance stops them."

"You know all about it!" smiled Lanny.

"Naturally; I help to fix people up. I'll have some new cases in the morning."

"None tonight, I hope, dear."

"Kiss me, Lanny. If we're going to die, let it be that way."

The uproar died away even more suddenly than it had come; they slept awhile, and early in the morning, when they got up, Lanny found a fragment of a shell near the broken window. It wasn't much more than an inch square, but had unpleasantly jagged edges. He said: "I'll keep it for a souvenir, unless you want it."

"We get plenty of them," replied the student nurse.

"Maybe it's a Budd." He knew, of course, that the British were using Budd shrapnel. "I'll see if my father can tell."

"They gather up the pieces and use them again," explained Rosemary.

That was her casual way. She told him to phone her or wire her as to when he would be sailing. She didn't know if she could get another leave, but she would try.

They went outside, and heard newsboys shouting, and saw posters in large letters: "U.S.A. in War!" "America Joins!" While the scion of Budd Gunmakers had been gathering rosebuds with the granddaughter of Lord Dewthorpe, the Senate of the United States had voted a declaration to the effect that a condition of war already existed between that country and Germany.

XI

It was a pleasant time to be in London. There were celebrations in the streets, and the usually self-contained islanders were hunting for some American, so that they could shake him by the hand and say: "Thanks, old chap, this is grand, we're all brothers now, and when will you be coming over?" Lanny asked his father if this would help him in getting contracts; Robbie said they'd expect him to give the patents now - but no such instructions had come from Newcastle, Connecticut!