Page:A Son at the Front (1923) Wharton.djvu/102

weeks reserved for Biarritz before the return to Paris in January. One of the luxuries Julia had most enjoyed after her separation from Campton (Adele had told him) had been that of planning things ahead: Mr. Brant, thank heaven, was not impulsive. And now here was this black bolt of war falling among all her carefully balanced arrangements with a crash more violent than any of Campton's inconsequences!

As he reached the Place de la Concorde a newsboy passed with the three o'clock papers, and he bought one and read of the crossing of Luxembourg and the invasion of Belgium. The Germans were arrogantly acting up to their menace: heedless of international law, they were driving straight for France and England by the road they thought the most accessible. . .

In the hotel he found George, red with rage, devouring the same paper: the boy's whole look was changed."The howling blackguards! The brigands! This isn't war—it's simple murder!"

The two men stood and stared at each other. "Will England stand it?" sprang to their lips at the same moment.

Never—never! England would never permit such a violation of the laws regulating the relations between civilized peoples. They began to say both together that after all perhaps it was the best thing that could have happened, since, if there had been the least hesitation or reluctance in any section of English opinion,