rned in time."

"I scarcely needed the warning. I was aware of the danger. My nephew
only told me what I knew. His warning, coming from him, an officer who
stands high in the German military service--it confirms my fears, no
more."

"But you can save yourself and your business," I said. "Knowing what is
before you, you can--you need not lend money, accept obligations. You
can gradually draw out of the stream of credit in which your fortune is
involved, get into a backwater for a while. You have time enough. I am
expressing myself all wrong; but you know what I mean."

"I know. And you think I ought to do that?"

"There is no 'ought' about it," I said. "It is the natural thing to do."

"You were a soldier once. I think you told me so."

I nodded.

"Suppose," said Ascher, "that this warning had come to you then, while
you were still a soldier. Suppose that you had known what your brother
officers did not know, or the men under you, that war was coming, you
would have resigned your commission. Is it so?"

"No," I said, "I shouldn't."

"It would have been, from my point of view--for I am a coward--it would
have been the natural thing to do."

"It wouldn't have been natural to me," I said. "I couldn't have done it.
I don't know why, but I couldn't. I'm not professing to be particularly
brave or chivalrous or anything of that sort. But to resign under those
circumstances----! Well, one doesn't do it."

"Nor do I know why," said Ascher, "but I cannot do it either. It is, you
see, the same thing. I must, of course, go on; just as you would have
felt yourself obliged to go on. The warning makes no difference."

The idea that a banker feels about his business as a soldier does about
his profession was new to me. But I understood more or less what Ascher
meant. If he had that kind of sense of obligation there was clearly no
more to be said about the point.

"And England?" I said. "Is she to be in it?"

"Who knows? Perhaps. Perhaps not. I hope not. The disaster will be far
less terrible if England is able to remain at peace."

"Tell me this," I said, "or if I am impertinent, say so, and I shall not
ask again. What was Captain von Richter doing in Ireland?"

"I do not know. I can only guess."

"Not buying horses?"

"I do not suppose he went there to buy horses though he may have bought
some. He went to see, to learn, to understand. That is what I guess. I
do not know."

"He has probably made up his mind," I s