"I think it very likely, my dear."

"But if we do, Graham - "

"We might as well face it. Graham will probably want to go."

"He'll do nothing of the sort," she said sharply. "He's all I have.
All. Do you think I'm going to send him over there to be
cannon-fodder? I won't let him go."

She was trembling violently.

"I won't want him to go, of course. But if the thing comes - he's
of age, you know."

She eyed him with thinly veiled hostility.

"You're hard, Clay," she accused him. "You're hard all the way
through. You're proud, too. Proud and hard. You'd want to be
able to say your son was in the army. It's not because you care
anything about the war, except to make money out of it. What is
the war to you, anyhow? You don't like the English, and as for
French - you don't even let me have a French butler."

He was not the less angry because he realized the essential truth of
part of what she said. He felt no great impulse of sympathy with
any of the combatants. He knew the gravity of the situation rather
than its tragedy. He did not like war, any war. He saw no reason
why men should kill. But this war was a fact. He had had no hand
in its making, but it was made.