For the man was, despite the admixture of Miraflores strain, an Anglo-Saxon: responded—though he knew it not—to the blind spirit of that race which came out of Italy through France, welded itself to dour Saxon and berserk Viking, and so spread, fighting always but always fighting as an ultimate issue for Independence, to Virginia and Quebec, to the Falkland Islands and the Hebrides, to South Africa and Australasia; till it became—scarcely conscious of its own oneness—the final arbiter in the great world-struggle of Decency against the filthy doctrines of the Beasts in Gray. And behind the man, equally resolute, equally blind to the spirit which moved her, stood Patricia, the Anglo-Saxon woman—thoroughbred, unflinching. § 2 England’s declaration of war did not make Peter Jameson “burn to avenge gallant little Belgium,” or eager, in the phraseology of the period, “to do his bit.” His commercial position was too damned awkward for the indulgence of any such sentiments. He left Wargrave at ten o’clock on the morning of August the fifth; and reached the outskirts of London in forty-five minutes. Then he gave the wheel to Murray, and began to think. Throughout, his hand had been perfectly steady at the throttle, his foot firm on the accelerator. Their speed had averaged forty miles an hour. Behind him, in the tonneau, sat Francis Gordon, acting as always on inspiration rather than reason, decision already reached. Francis Gordon talked to himself, under his breath: first in Dutch and then in German. He was testing, not his knowledge of those languages, but his accent. “_Ich kann es tun. Ich bin einer der einzigen die es tun konnen_,” he muttered. Then he began to recite, very slowly and almost inaudibly, the first speech from Schiller’s Republican Tragedy: Leonora. “Nichts mehr. Nichts mehr. Kein Wort mehr. Es ist am Tag.”[1] Peter was not talking to himself; had reached no decision. His brain went over the salient facts of the situation; weighing them up. Discarding details. Selecting essentials. The Jameson-Beckmann problem must wait. How would Nirvana be affected? Home-trade, for the moment at any rate, would collapse. The export-business might hold up. Might. Probably wouldn’t. Remained the fact that if the worst came to the worst he stood to loose seventeen thousand pounds. . . . After all, people must smoke. Wars didn’t last for ever. Could he see the thing through? Financially? . . . “London & Joint Stock Bank, Pall Mall,” he said to the chauffeur. They swirled through Piccadilly; nipped round past the Ritz; slowed down St. James’ Street; and pulled up. “Afraid I can’t lend you the car, old man,” said Peter. “I shall want it all day. Are you coming down again to-night?”