"If you still have some of the other. You understand?"
"No beer for me!" Louise exclaimed.
"Champagne," the captain suggested.
She agreed, but Caroline had a fancy for something else. August
Turnbull preferred a Scotch whisky and soda. The cafe was crowded;
everywhere drinking multiplied in an illuminated haze of cigarettes. A
slight girl in an airy slip and bare legs was executing a furious dance
with a powdered youth on the open space. The girl whirled about her
partner's head, a rigid shape in a flutter of white.
They stood limply answering the rattle of applause that followed. A
woman in an extravagantly low-cut gown took their place, singing. There
was no possibility of mistaking her allusions; August smiled broadly,
but Louise and Caroline Rathe watched her with an unmoved sharp
curiosity. In the same manner they studied other women in the cafe;
more than once August Turnbull hastily averted his gaze at the
discovery that his daughter and he were intent upon the same
individual.
"The U-boats are at it again," Bernard commented in a lowered voice.
"And, though it is war," Frederick added, "every one here is squealing
like a mouse. 'Ye are not great enough to know of hatred and envy,'" he
quoted. "'It is the good war which halloweth every cause.'"
"I wish you wouldn't say those things here," his wife murmured.
"'Thou goest to women?'" he lectured her with mock solemnity. "'Do not
forget thy whip!'"
The whisky ran in a burning tide through August Turnbull's senses.
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