The threat lightened as they dined alone deliciously, as a foretaste of housekeeping in common; Phillida left him no thoughts to stray and only once, while the evening lasted, did they look from their private Paradise upon the world of common humanity. Phillida, as the clock neared ten, wondered vaguely what Henderson had wanted with her father? Was there anything particular, did Theodore know, any news about the Federal Council?... He hesitated for a moment, then told her the bare facts only—the vote and the minority protest. “A protest,” she repeated. “That’s what they’ve all been afraid of.... It looks bad, doesn’t it?” He agreed it looked bad; thinking less, it may be, of the threat of red ruin and disaster than of Rathbone’s warning that his duties would part him from Phillida. “I hope it doesn’t mean war,” she said. At the time her voice struck him as serious, even anxious; later it amazed him that she had spoken so quietly, that there was no trembling of the slim white fingers that played with her chain of heavy beads. “Do you think it does?” she asked him. Because he remembered the threat of parting and had need of her daily presence, he was stubborn in declaring that it did not, and could not, mean war; quoting Holt that modern war was impossible, that statesmen and soldiers knew it, and insisting that this was the Transylvanian business over again and would be settled as that was settled. She shook her head thoughtfully, having heard other views from her father; but her voice (he knew later) was thoughtful only—not a quiver, not a hint of real fear in it. “It’ll have to come sometime—now or in a year or two. At least, that’s what everybody says. I wonder if it’s true.” “No,” he said, “it isn’t—unless we make it true. This sort of thing—it’s a kind of common nightmare we have now and then. Every few years—and when it’s over we turn round and wake up and wonder what the devil we were frightened about.” “Yes,” she agreed, “when you come to think of it, it is rather like that. I don’t remember in the least what the fuss was all about last time—but I know the papers were full of Transylvania and the poor old Dad was worked off his head for a week or two.... And then it was over and we forgot all about it.” And at that they turned and went back to their golden solitude, shutting out, for the rest of the evening, a world that made protests and sent ominous telegrams. Before Theodore left her, to walk home restless with delight, they had decided on the fashion of Phillida’s ring and planned the acquisition of a Georgian house—with powder-closet. It was his restless delight that made sleep impossible—and he sat at his window and smoked till the east was red.... While Henderson and Rathbone, a mile or two away, planned Distribution on a war-footing. * * * * *