“Well,” said Baltazar, with a big gesture of both arms, “that’s how it is. To sum up. Eighteen years’ blank ignorance of, and indifference to, European history—political, social, moral, artistic, scientific. A week’s dismay and disgust. Two years’ seclusion devoted to the consolidation of my life’s work. The whole thing wiped out in a night. Awakening to find the world had been at war for two years. Myself adrift in a sort of typhoon, with not a human straw to cling to but my adopted son, this extraordinary mathematical genius of a Quong Ho. I fly to Cambridge to try to get some sort of sane attachment to life. I discover your existence. No sooner do I meet you than I’m thrown against the very woman for whose sake, as a young man, I chucked the whole of my career. And here am I, as strong as a horse. Feel that”—he tendered his arm and braced his muscle, and Godfrey gripping it proclaimed, with wonder, that it was like an iron bar—“and with a first-class working brain, and the country is crying out both for brains and muscle, and I’ll go mad if I don’t give the country my best. But at the same time, I’m just a month-old child. I’m dazed by everything. And I’ve got you and Marcelle and Quong Ho to look after. You’re all inextricably woven into the tapestry of my life. Mathematics and Chinese scholarship can go to the devil. Only the four of you matter——” “Four?” Godfrey queried. “Yes. Four. You, Marcelle, Quong Ho, and England.” “That’s a tall order, sir,” smiled Godfrey. “But as for me, I’m all right. I can fend for myself. You can cut me out.” Baltazar brought down his hand with a great thump on the little table. “I’m damned if I do!” And to the waiter who ran up in some alarm: “Yes, tea. China tea. Gallons of it.” CHAPTER XV