Philippa had risen to a sitting position, and now she was lying back comfortably extended among the cushions.
They exchanged a few words; her voice was calm, cheerful, untroubled. She offered to take the punt pole; said that at first she had felt more bewildered and dazed than frightened; explained that real fear had first possessed her when the dead and bloody swan floated past, and that then she had been horribly afraid of the sky noises—the shrieking, hooting, whistling approach of the unseen.
He had been under fire in the Balkans; Lule Bourgas had blunted for him the keener edge of terror. And now, still thoroughly stirred, only the excitement of the past hour remained and stimulated him.
"It’s war all around us now," he said, driving his punting pole steadily and straining his keen eyes into the shadows beyond. "There are stirring days ahead for France in this region, I fear; the Barrier Forts are far away and there is nothing in the north to hold the deluge breaking over Luxembourg into Belgium.
"A great war is beginning, Philippa; the greatest that the earth has ever faced.... I never supposed that I should live to see such a war—the greatest of all wars—the last _great_ war, I think.
"If I were anything except a useless painter, I’d go into it.... I don’t know what good I’d be to anybody. But if anybody wants me——"
"We both can offer ourselves," said Philippa.
"Dear child! I’d like to catch _you_ wandering into this sort of——"
"You shall _not_! You’ll go to Paris with Madame de Moidrey—that’s what you’ll do!"
"Jim, that is absurd. If I’m wanted I shall volunteer for hospital service, anyway. And if you offer yourself I shall wait until I find out where you are to be sent, and then I shall beg them to take me at the nearest field ambulance."
"No good, Philippa. They do that sort of thing in romances, but in real life a course of hospital training is required of volunteers."
"I can scrub floors and sew and cook," she said serenely. "Do they not need such people?"
"There’s no use discussing it," he said. "Only trained women will be wanted—tolerated; and I suppose only trained men. The amateur nurse and warrior were utterly and definitely discredited in South Africa. There’ll be no more of that. There’s no room for us, Philippa; the firing line would reject me with derision, and the base hospital would politely bow you out." He laughed rather mirthlessly. "There remains for us," he said, "the admirable, but somewhat monotonous thinking-rôles of respectable citizens—items in the world-wide chorus which marches harmlessly hither and thither during the impending drama, and forms pleasing backgrounds for the principals when they take their curtain calls."