Moonchild

outlines — we'll talk after dinner — on the road." Cyril took a chair. To his delight, an aide-de-camp, Lord Juventius Mellor, an exquisite young dandy with a languid lisp, who, in time of peace, had been pupil and private secretary of Simon Iff, came to greet him. "Ju, dear boy, help me out. I've got to tell Cripps something, and he'll think I'm mad. It's bluff, too; but it's true for all that — and it's the one chance in the world." "Right O!" "Are we retreating again?" "All through the night. There's not a dog's chance to save Paris, and the line stretches every hour." "Don't worry about Paris — it's as safe as Bordeaux. Safer, because the Covernment is at Bordeaux!" "My poor friend, wouldn't you be better in a home?" The British Army had no illusions about its situation. It was a thin, drab line of heroes, very thin and very drab, but there was no doubt about the heroism, and no uncertainty about what would happen to it if the Germans possessed a leader with initiative. So far the hostile legions had moved according to the rules, with all due scientific precaution. A leader of temperament and intuition might have rushed that tenuous line. Still, science was as sure as it was as slow — and the whole army knew it. They prepared to die as expensively as possible, with simplicity of manhood. They had not yet heard that Press and Pulpit had made them the laughing-stock of the world by the invention of the ridiculous story of the "Angels of Mons." [323] Lord Juventius Mellor was something of a hero-worshipper. From Simon Iff he would have taken any statement with absolute respect, and Grey's remark had been somewhat of the Simon Iff brand. It was, therefore, almost as much an impertinence as it was an absurdity. Paris was as certain to fall as the sun to set. It was in rotten bad taste to joke about it. "Look here!" said Cyril, "I'm serious." "All the worse!" retorted Mellor. "You really would be better in a home." "You wouldn't talk like that if we were discussing magick." "True." "Then you are an ass. I am talking magick. If you had only ears to hear!" "How?" "Everything's a magical phenomenon, in the long run. But war's magick, from the word jump. Come now therefore and let us reason together, saith the