He was dry and curiously deliberate—leaning back in his chair, speaking quietly, with fingers pressed together.... To the end Theodore remembered him like that; a square-jawed man, leaning back in his chair, speaking slowly, unemotionally—the harbinger of infinite misfortune.... And himself, the listener, a young man engrossed by his own new happiness; irritated, at first, by the intrusion of that which did not concern it; then (as once before in Vallance’s rooms) uneasy and conscious of a threat. He heard himself asking, “You think it’s—serious?” and saw Rathbone’s mouth twist into the odd semblance of a smile. “I think so. One way or other we shall know within a week.” “You can’t mean—war?” Theodore asked again—remembering Holt and his “Impossible!” “It doesn’t seem unlikely,” said Rathbone. He had risen, with his hands thrust deep into his pockets, and begun to pace backwards and forwards. “Something may happen at the last minute—but it’s difficult to see how they can draw back. They have gone too far. They’re committed, just as we are—committed to a principle.... If we yield the Council abdicates its authority once for all; it’s an end of the League—a plain break, and the Lord knows what next. And the other side daren’t stop at verbal protest. They will have to push their challenge; there’s too much clamour behind them....” “There was Transylvania,” Theodore reminded him. “I know—and nothing came of it. But that wasn’t pushed quite so far.... They threatened, but never definitely—they left themselves a possibility of retreat. Now ... as I said, something may happen ... and, meanwhile, to go back to what I meant about you, personally, how this might affect you....” He dropped into swift explanation. “Considerable rearrangement in the work of the Department—if it should be necessary to place it on a war-footing.” Theodore’s duties—if the worst should happen—would certainly take him out of London and therefore part him from Phillida. “I can tell you that definitely—now.” Perhaps he realized that the announcement, on a day of betrothal, was brutal; for he checked himself suddenly in his walk to and fro, clapped the young man good-naturedly on the shoulder, repeated that “Something might happen” and supposed he would not be sorry to hear that a member of the Government required his presence—“So you and Phillida can dine without superfluous parents.”... And he said no word of war or parting to Phillida—who came down with Theodore to watch her father off, standing arm-in-arm upon the doorstep in the pride of her new relationship.