"Why don't you say what you mean?" George asked, irritably. "Perhaps you ask that," Wandel drawled, "because you don't understand what I mean to say." "I won't take care of your apartment," George snapped. "I won't have any hand in such a piece of foolishness." With Goodhue, however, he went to the pier to see Wandel off; absorbed with the little man the sorrowful and apprehensive atmosphere of the odorous shed; listened to choked farewells; saw brimming eyes; shared the pallid anticipations of those about to venture forth upon an unnatural sea; touched at last the very fringe of war. "Why is he doing it?" George asked as Goodhue and he drove across town to the subway. "I've never counted Driggs a sentimentalist." "I'm not sure," Goodhue answered, "this doesn't prove he isn't. He's always had an acute appreciation of values. Don't you remember? We used to call him 'Spike'." * * * * * George let himself drift with events, but Wandel's departure increased his uneasiness. Suppose he should be forced by circumstances to abandon everything; against his better judgment to go? Automatically his thoughts turned to Squibs. He recalled his advice. "Don't let your ideas smoulder in your head. Come home and talk them over." He sent a telegram and followed it the next day. The Baillys met him at the station, affectionately, without any reproaches for his long absence. The menace was in the air here, too, for Mrs. Bailly's first question, sharply expressed, was: "You're not going, if----" "I don't want to go," he answered. Bailly studied him, but he didn't say anything. That afternoon there was a boat race on Lake Carnegie. The Alstons drove the Baillys and George down some hospitable resident's lane to an advantageous bank near the finish line. They spread rugs and made themselves comfortable there, but the party was subdued. Squibs and Mr. Alston didn't seem to care to talk. Betty asked Mrs. Bailly's question, received an identical answer, and fell silent, too. Only Mrs. Alston appeared to detect no change in the world, remaining cheerfully imperial as if alarms couldn't possibly approach her abruptly. Even to George such a scene, sharing one planet with the violences of Europe, appeared contradictory. The fancifully garbed undergraduates, who ran along the bank; the string of automobiles on the towpath opposite; the white and gleaming pleasure boats in the canal; the shells themselves, with coloured oar-blades that flashed in the sunlight; most of all the green frame for this pleasantly exciting contest had an air of telling him that everything unseen was rumour, dream stuff; either that, or else that the seen was visionary, while in those remote places existed the only material world, the revolting and essential realities. Bailly at last interrupted his revery, with his long, thin arm making a gesture that included the athletes; the running, youthful partisans.