Five hundred and fifty between them. Anyhow, she told herself, that was better than a jab in the eye with a burnt stick. How soon might the marriage be brought off? One must bend one’s energies to the solving of that question. How many sleepless nights—they were horribly unbecoming!—lay between Patrine and Security? The Fear that lurked in her dried her palate at the question. She felt like the runner of a Marathon fainting in sight of the goal. *CHAPTER XLV* *FLOTSAM FROM THE NORTH SEA* On Monday morning, July 20th, under a flying double-column of Naval Goody Two Shoes and aëroplanes, the King led forth his Fleets for tactical exercises in the Channel. There were pictures on the screens at the music-halls that night and for many nights after, that evoked from huge audiences tremendous outbursts of patriotic clapping. Hence first blood in the Great War scores to Lil, belonging to the most ancient of all professions—who had accepted the invitation proffered by a Teutonic stranger to join the familiar crowd on the Empire Promenade. The German paid for drinks. A friend joined him. There were more drinks, and the two men began to talk, discussing the _ultimatum_ expected from Austria-Hungary, and the inevitable refusal of Belgrade to eat Vienna humble-pie. War with Russia must ensue. They were cheering in Berlin that night for _Krieg mit Russland_. "It must come sometime," said Lil’s patron in an undertone to his crony. "Why then should it not happen now?" "War with Russia means war with France!" the other returned in the same key. "And war with France a reckoning with these pig-dogs!" snarled Lil’s temporary owner. "If the Serbians and Russes are to be smacked—good! If the French—good also! If the English, a thousand times the better!" "Let us hope," said the more placable Teuton, emptying his second liqueur-glass of Kümmel—"that it will not be this time as at the affair of Agadir!" "We are ready!" said Lil’s patron with an oath. "We have seven millions of men ready, and two thousand millions of cartridges, and for shell—one would not have dreamed the world held so much steel packed with super-explosive. No, no! _Diesmal wird es nicht sein wie in der Agadir!_" He inquired as they left the bar and moved to where Lil, steeped in the Pictures, was standing at the front of the Promenade: "What are these _Gottverflucht_ jackasses braying about?" The jackasses were lustily cheering the portrait of Admiral Sir John Rushworth Jellicoe, Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet—now flung upon the screen. And the jackasses got upon their feet with a sound as though the packed house were tumbling to pieces, and the Orchestra changed on the final bar of "Rule Britannia!" and the more belligerent of the two Teutons leaned over the barricade and hissed malignantly, as wind and strings crashed tumultuously into "God save the King!"