e, and all that kind of thing. But if not---"

"Well?"

"If not, there will be a catastrophe such as never has been even
imagined. The whole human race will be at war, and either East or West
will be simply wiped out. These new Benninschein explosives will make
certain of that."

"But is it absolutely certain that the East has got them?"

"Absolutely. Benninschein sold them simultaneously to East and West;
then he died, luckily for him."

Mabel had heard this kind of talk before, but her imagination simply
refused to grasp it. A duel of East and West under these new conditions
was an unthinkable thing. There had been no European war within living
memory, and the Eastern wars of the last century had been under the old
conditions. Now, if tales were true, entire towns would be destroyed
with a single shell. The new conditions were unimaginable. Military
experts prophesied extravagantly, contradicting one another on vital
points; the whole procedure of war was a matter of theory; there were no
precedents with which to compare it. It was as if archers disputed as to
the results of cordite. Only one thing was certain--that the East had
every modern engine, and, as regards male population, half as much
again as the rest of the world put together; and the conclusion to be
drawn from these premisses was not reassuring to England.

But imagination simply refused to speak. The daily papers had a short,
careful leading article every day, founded upon the scraps of news that
stole out from the conferences on the other side of the world;
Felsenburgh's name appeared more frequently than ever: otherwise there
seemed to be a kind of hush. Nothing suffered very much; trade went on;
European stocks were not appreciably lower than usual; men still built
houses, married wives, begat sons and daughters, did their business and
went to the theatre, for the mere reason that there was no good in
anything else. They could neither save nor precipitate the situation; it
was on too large a scale. Occasionally people went mad--people who had
succeeded in goading their imagination to a height whence a glimpse of
reality could be obtained; and there was a diffused atmosphere of
tenseness. But that was all. Not many speeches were made on the subject;
it had been found inadvisable. After all, there was nothing to do but to
wait.

III

Mabel remembered her husband's advice to watch, and for a few days did
her best. But there was nothing tha