director (who represented G.J.'s interests on the Board), and it
stated that the War Office had been to the Reveille Company, and
implored it to enlarge itself, and given it vast orders at grand
prices for all sorts of things that it had never made before. The
profits of 1915 would be doubled, if not trebled--perhaps quadrupled.
G.J. was relieved, uplifted; and he sniggered at his terrible
forebodings of August and September. Ruin? He was actually going to
make money out of the greatest war that the world, etc. etc. And why
not? Somebody had to make money, and somebody had to pay for the
war in income tax. For the first time the incubus of the war seemed
lighter upon G.J. And also he need feel no slightest concern about
the financial aspect of any possible developments of the Christine
adventure. He had a very clear and undeniable sensation of positive
happiness.




Chapter 7

FOR THE EMPIRE


Mrs. Braiding came into the drawing-room, and he wondered, paternally,
why she was so fidgety and why her tranquillising mate had not
appeared. To the careless observer she was a cheerful woman, but the
temple of her brightness was reared over a dark and frightful crypt
in which the demons of doubt, anxiety, and despair year after year
dragged at their chains, intimidating hope. Slender, small, and neat,
she passed her life in bravely fronting the shapes of disaster with an