d the wisdom of the Baillys and Sinclairs were forced upon
him. Wilson wasn't going to keep them out of it. George stood face to
face with the decision he had shirked when the _Lusitania_ had taken her
fatal dive.

It couldn't be shirked again, for the declaration of war appeared to be
a matter of days, weeks at the most. The drum was beginning to sound
with a rising resonance. Lambert and Goodhue would be among the first to
leave. Already they made their plans. They didn't seem to care what
became of the business.

"What are you up to, George?" they asked.

He put them off. He wanted to think it out. He didn't care to have his
decision blurred by the rattling of a drum. Yet it was patent to him if
he should go at all it would be with his partners, among the first. The
thought of such a triple desertion appalled him. Mundy was incomparable
for system and routine, but if he had possessed the rare selective
foresight demanded for the steering of a big business he would long
since have been at the helm of his own house. It would be far better, if
George had to go, to sell the stock and the mass of soaring securities
the firm had acquired; in short, to close out before competitors could
squeeze the abandoned ship from the channel.

Why dwell on so wasteful an alternative? Why not turn sanely from so
sentimental a choice? It was clear enough to him that it would not long
survive the war, all this singing and shouting, this driving forth by
older people on the winds of a safe enthusiasm of countless young men
to grotesque places of death.

He paced his room. That was just it. It was the present he had to
consider, and the present thoughts of people who hadn't yet returned to
their inevitable practicality, forgetfulness, and ingratitude; most of
all to the present thoughts of Sylvia. To him she had made those
thoughts sufficiently plain. Among non-combatant enthusiasts she would
be the most exigent. Why swing from choice to choice any longer? To be
as he had fancied she would wish, he had struggled, denied, kept himself
clean, sought minutely for the proper veneer; and so far he had kept his
record straight. With her it was his one weapon. He couldn't throw that
away.

He stopped his pacing. He sat before his desk, his head in his hands,
listening to the cacophanous beating of drums by the majority for the
anxious marching of a few.

It was settled. He had always known it would be, in just that way.

XXI

George