Sir Henry shrugged his shoulders.  His tone became a trifle colder.

’I can’t believe that you will refuse.  You can’t deny—­no sensible man could—­that we’ve simply got to grow more food at home.  The submarines have settled that for us.’

’Who brought the submarines upon us?  The politicians!  No politicians, no war!  If it hadn’t been for a pack of idiots called diplomats making mischief abroad, and a pack of incompetents called politicians unable to keep their heads at home, there’d have been no war.  It’s Russia’s war—­France’s war!  Who asked the country whether it wanted a war?  Who asked me?’ The Squire, standing opposite to Sir Henry, tapped his chest vehemently.

‘The country is behind the war,’ said Chicksands firmly.

’How do we know?  How do you know?  I’ve as much right to an opinion as you, and I tell you the country is sick and tired of the war.  We are all dying of the war!  We shall all be paupers because of the war!  What is France to me, or Belgium?  We shall have lost men, money, security—­half the things that make life worth living—­for what?’

‘Honour!’ said Sir Henry sharply, as he got on his feet.

‘Honour!’ sneered Mannering—­’what’s honour?  It means one thing to me and another to you.  Aubrey bangs me over the head with it.  But I’m like the Doctor in the Punch and Judy show—­he thinks he’s knocked me flat.  He hasn’t.  I’ve a new argument every time he comes.  And as for my daughters, they think me a lunatic—­a stingy lunatic besides—­because I won’t give to their Red Cross shows and bazaars.  I’ve nothing to give.  The income tax gentlemen have taken care of that.’

‘Yet you spend on this kind of thing!’ Sir Henry pointed to the vases.  He had grown a little white.

’Of course I can.  That’s permanent.  That’s something to mend the holes that the soldiers and the politicians are making.  When the war’s become a nightmare that nobody wants to remember, those little things’—­he pointed to a group of Greek bronzes and terra-cottas on a table near—­’will still be the treasures of the world!’

In the yeasty deep of Sir Henry’s honest mind emotions were rising which he knew now he should not long be able to control.  He took up his hat and stick.

’I’m sorry, Mannering, that I have not been able to convince you.  I’m sorry for your point of view—­and I’m sorry for your sons.’

The words slipped out of his mouth before he knew.

The Squire bounded.

’My sons!  The one’s a fire-eater, with whom you can’t argue.  The other’s a child—­a babe—­whom the Government proposes to murder before he has begun to live.’

Sir Henry looked at the speaker, who had been violently flushed a minute earlier, and was now as pale as himself, and then at the sketch of Desmond, just behind the Squire.  His eyes dropped; the hurry in his blood subsided.

’Well, good-bye, Mannering.  I’ll—­I’ll do what I can to make things easy for you.’