He snarled back: "You don't have to! Why don't you go with your bloomin' Phil and Olive? Of course, I don't ever want to go myself!" "See here, my friend, you have been taking advantage for a long time now of the fact that you were ill. I'm not going to be your nurse indefinitely." She slammed her bedroom door. Later she came stalking out, very dignified, and left the flat. He pretended not to see her. But as soon as the elevator door had clanged and the rumbling old car had begun to carry her down, away from him, the flat was noisy with her absence. She came home eagerly sorry--to find an eagerly sorry Carl. Then, while they cried together, and he kissed her lips, they made a compact that no matter for what reason or through whose fault they might quarrel, they would always settle it before either went to bed.... But they were uncomfortably polite for two days, and obviously were so afraid that they might quarrel that they were both prepared to quarrel. Carl had been back at work for less than one month, but he hoped that the Touricar was giving enough promise now of positive success to permit him to play during the evening. He rented a VanZile car for part time; planned week-end trips; hoped they could spend---- Then the whole world exploded. Just at the time when the investigation of Twilight Sleep indicated that the world might become civilized, the Powers plunged into a war whose reason no man has yet discovered. Carl read the head-lines on the morning of August 5th, 1914, with a delusion of not reading "news," but history, with himself in the history book. Ten thousand books record the Great War, and how bitterly Europe realized it; this is to record that Carl, like most of America, did not comprehend it, even when recruits of the Kaiser marched down Broadway with German and American flags intertwined, even when his business was threatened. It was too big for his imagination. Every noon he bought half a dozen newspaper extras and hurried down to the bulletin-boards on the _Times_ and _Herald_ buildings. He pretended that he was a character in one of the fantastic novels about a world-war when he saw such items as "Russians invading Prussia," "Japs will enter war," "Aeroplane and submarine attack English cruiser." "Rats!" he said, "I'm dreaming. There couldn't be a war like that. We're too civilized. I can prove the whole thing 's impossible."