all the cars of the warring nations being
destroyed.

But, once VanZile had considered the possibility of letting go his
Touricar interest in order to be safe, he seemed always to be
considering it. Carl read fate in VanZile's abstracted manner. And if
VanZile withdrew, Carl's own stock would be worthless. But he stuck at
his work, with something of a boy's frightened stubbornness and
something of a man's quiet sternness. Fear was never far from him. In
an aeroplane he had never been greatly frightened; he could himself,
by his own efforts, fight the wind. But how could he steer a world-war
or a world-industry?

He tried to conceal his anxiety from Ruth, but she guessed it. She
said, one evening: "Sometimes I think we two are unusual, because we
really want to be free. And then a thing like this war comes and our
bread and butter and little pink cakes are in danger, and I realize
we're not free at all; that we're just like all the rest, prisoners,
dependent on how much the job brings and how fast the subway runs. Oh,
sweetheart, we mustn't forget to be just a bit mad, no matter how
serious things become." Standing very close to him, she put her head
on his shoulder.

"Sure mustn't. Must stick by each other all the more when the world
takes a run and jumps on us."

"Indeed we will!"

* * * * *

Unsparingly the war's cosmic idiocy continued, and Carl crawled along
the edge of a business precipice, looking down. He became so
accustomed to it that he began to enjoy the view. The old Carl, with
the enthusiasm which had served him for that undefined quality called
"courage," began to come to life again, laughing, "Let the darned old
business bust, if she's going to."

Only, it refused to bust.

It kept on trembling, while Carl became nervous again, then gaily
defiant, then nervous again, till the alternation of gloom and bravado
disgusted him and made Ruth wonder whether he was an office-slave or a
freebooter. As he happened to be both at the time, it was hard for
him to be either convincingly. She accused him of vacillating; he
retorted; the suspense kept them both raw....

To add to their difficulties of adjustment to each other, and to the
ego-mad world, Ruth's sense of established amenities was shocked by
the reappearance of Carl's pioneering past as revealed in the lively
but vulgar person of Martin Dockerill, Carl's former aviation
mechanic.

Martin Dockerill was lanky and