“And you intend to sit here and wait for them?”

“I shall be at the front.”

“You know you haven’t a chance!”

“My advisers think that my presence at the front will encourage our men sufficiently to win the day.”

“Have you a charm against mustard gas?”

“That is our weakness.  No, we have no masks.”

“And the wind setting up from the sea at this time of year!  Your army is going straight into a trap, and you along with it.  Half of the men who advise you to go to the front will fight like lions against a net, and the other half will sell you to the French!  Your fifty thousand men will melt like butter in the sun and your Arab cause will be left without a leader!”

Feisul pondered that for about a minute, leaning back and watching Grim’s face.

“We held a council of war, Jimgrim,” he said at last.  “It was the unanimous opinion of the staff that we ought to fight and the cabinet upheld them.  I couldn’t cancel the order if I wished.  What would you think of a king who left his army in the lurch?”

“Nobody will ever accuse you of cowardice,” Grim answered.  “You’re a proven brave man if ever there was one.  The point is, do you want all your bravery and hard work for the Arab cause to go for nothing?  Do you want the prospect of Arab independence to go up in smoke on a gas-swept battlefield?”

“It would break my heart,” said Feisul, “although one heart hardly matters.”

“It would break more hearts than yours,” Grim retorted.  “There are millions looking to you for leadership.  Leave me out of it.  Leave Lawrence out of it, and all the other non-Moslems who have done their bit for you.  Leave most of these Syrians out of it; for they’re simply politicians making use of you—­a mess of breeds and creeds so mixed and corrupted that they don’t know which end up they stand!  If the Syrians had guts they’d have rallied so hard to you long ago that no outsider would have had a chance.”

“What do you mean?  What are you proposing?” Feisul asked quietly.

“Baghdad is your place, not Damascus!”

“But here I am in Damascus,” Feisul retorted; and for the first time there was a note of impatience in his voice.  “I came here at the request of the Allies, on the strength of their promises.  I did not ask to be king.  I would rather not be.  Let any man be ruler whom the Arabs choose, and I will work for him loyally.  But the Arabs chose me and the Allies consented.  It was only after they had won their war with our help that the French began raising objections and, the British deserted me.  It is too late to talk of Baghdad now.”

“It isn’t!  It’s too soon!” Grim answered, bringing down a clenched fist on his knee, and Feisul laughed in spite of himself.