WORLD'S END

"Don't let anybody fool you about money, son. The people who talk that nonsense don't believe it themselves. They tell you that money won't buy this, that, and the other thing. I tell you that money will buy an awful lot, especially if you're a good shopper. You get my point?"

"Oh, sure, Robbie."

"Take Edna Hackabury. Money bought her a yacht, and the yacht got her a lot of friends. Now she's lost her yacht, and she and her captain will have to live on two thousand pounds a year; and how many of her old friends will come to see her? She'll be embarrassed if they do, because she can't keep up with them. She'll find that she's forced to get some cheaper friends."

"I know, Robbie, there are people like that; but others are interested in art, and music, and books, and so on."

"That's quite true; and I'm glad to see that you prefer such friends. But when those friends grow old, and their blood flows slower, they'll want a warm fire, and money will buy the fire. Money won't buy them appreciation of books, but it will buy them books, and what's the use of appreciation if you haven't anything to use it on? No, son, the only way to be happy without money is to go and live in a tub, like Diogenes, or be a Hindu with a rag around your loins and a bowl to beg for rice. Even then you can't live unless other people have cared enough for money to grow rice, and to market and transport it."

"Then you don't think there's anything we can do for Beauty?" "What I think, son, is that one or the other of us has got to work at that code; because this is a time of crisis, and a whole lot of women have worse troubles than trying to make up their minds which man they want."

VIII

That was the first of August; and early in the day came the news that Germany had declared war on Russia. Soon afterward it was reported that both Germany and France had ordered general mobilization.

The temper of Paris changed in an hour. Previously everything had been hushed; people anxious, frightened, horrified. But now the die was cast. It was war! That hateful Kaiser with his waxed mustaches, those military men who surrounded him, strutting and blustering - they had thrown Europe into the furnace. At least, that was the way the Paris crowds saw it; and business came to an end for the day, everybody rushed into the streets. Bugles sounding everywhere, drums rolling, crowds marching and cheering. They were singing the "Marseillaise" on every street corner; and "Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre" - to which Americans sing "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow"; also the "Carmagnole," which Americans do not know-all the old revolutionary songs of France, now become patriotic and respectable.

Lanny finished his secretarial labors and went out to see the sights, the most stirring any boy could have imagined. Pink mobilization orders posted on kiosks and walls; young men assembling and marching to the trains; women and girls running beside them, singing, weeping hysterically, or laughing, borne up by the excitement of the throngs; people throwing flowers at them, putting roses in the soldiers' red caps, in the hair of the girls. And the regiments marching to the railroad stations, or being loaded into trucks - it wouldn't be long before you could no longer find a taxicab or even a horse in Paris.

And then back to the Hotel Crillon. The Champs-Йlysйes, that wide avenue, and the great open spaces, the Place de la Concorde, the Place du Carrousel, now like military encampments; regiments marching, horses galloping, artillery rumbling, people singing, shouting: "La guerre! La guerre!"

Inside the hotel another kind of tumult, for it appeared that there were thousands of Americans in Paris, and they all wanted to get out quickly. Many were caught without funds; they wanted food and shelter, railroad tickets, steamer accommodations, everything all at once. They had been reading about a new kind of warfare, and had visions of squadrons of German airplanes dropping bombs upon Paris that afternoon. It seemed that every person who had ever met Robbie Budd was now asking him for advice, for the loan of money, for his influence in getting something from the embassy, from the consulate, from railroad and steamship and travel bureaus.

When they couldn't get hold of Robbie, they would go to his former wife, who had always been able to get anything from him. Beauty, who wanted to sit and stare in front of her and think, who wanted to weep without anybody seeing her ruined complexion, had to put on a few dabs of paint and powder, and her lovely blue Chinese morning robe with large golden pheasants on it, and receive her friends, and the friends of her friend Emily and her friend Sophie and her friend Margy, and tell them what Robbie said, that there wasn't any immediate danger, that the embassy would advance money as soon as they had time to hear from Washington, that Rob-