ight lifting of the back of
the nostrils and a slight tipping forward of the whole head. His tone,
however, often by its bluff good-humour, contradicted the expression. He
had in an extreme degree the appearance of a Jew, and he had the names
of a Jew; and most people said he was a Jew. But he himself seriously
denied it. He asserted that he came of a Welsh Nonconformist family,
addicted to christening its infants out of the Bible, and could prove
his descent for generations--not that he minded being taken for a Jew
(he would add), was indeed rather flattered thereby, but he simply was
not a Jew. At any rate he was Welsh. A journalist had described him in a
phrase: "All the time he's talking to you in English you feel he's
thinking something different in Welsh." He was an exceedingly rich
industrial, and had made his money by organization; he seemed always to
have leisure.

"Here," he curtly advised George, producing a magnificent Partaga,
similar to the one he was himself smoking, "you'd better have this."

He cut the cigar carefully with a club tool, and pushed the match-stand
across the table with a brusque gesture. George would not thank him for
the cigar.

"You're on that Indian barracks, aren't you?"

"Yes. They're in a Hades of a hurry."

"Well, my factory is in much more of a hurry."

George was startled. He had heard nothing of the factory for a month,
and had assumed that the war had scotched the enterprise.

He said:

"Then the war won't stop you?"

Sir Isaac shook his head slowly, with an arrogant smile. It then
occurred to George that this man differed strangely from all other
men--because the sinister spell of the war had been powerless over him
alone. All other men bore the war in their faces and in their gestures,
but this man did not.

"I'm going to make munitions now--explosives. I'm going to have the
biggest explosives factory in the world. However, the modifications in
the general plan won't be serious. I want to talk to you about that."

"Have you got contracts, then, already?"

"No. Both the War Office and the Admiralty have told me they have all
the explosives they want," he sneered. "But I've made a few inquiries,
and I think that by the time my factory's up they'll be wanting more
explosives than they can get. In fact I wish I could build half a dozen
factories. Dare say I shall."

"Then you think we're in for a long war?"

"Not specially that. If it's a long war you English wi