Publisher's Synopsis
They were at St Moritz-as usual.He and M. Gantier had been for a tramp through the Val Suvretta, and, coming home late, wererushing into their evening clothes to join Mr. and Mrs. Belknap at dinner (as they did now regularly, Troy having reached the virile age of fifteen, and having to justify the possession of a smoking-jacketand patent-leather shoes). He was just out of his bath, and smothered in towels, when the tutoropened the door and thrust in a newspaper."There will be war-I must leave to-morrow."Troy dropped the towels.War! War! War against his beautiful France! And this young man, his dearest friend and companion, was to be torn from him suddenly, senselessly, torn from their endless talks, their long walks in themountains, their elaborately planned courses of study-archæology, French literature, mediævalphilosophy, the Divine Comedy, and vistas and vistas beyond-to be torn from all this, and todisappear from Troy Belknap's life into the black gulf of this unfathomable thing called War, thatseemed suddenly to have escaped out of the history books like a dangerous lunatic escaping fromthe asylum in which he was supposed to be securely confined!Troy Belknap was stunned.He pulled himself together to bid a valiant farewell to M. Gantier (the air was full of the"Marseillaise" and Sambre-et-Meuse, and everybody knew the Russians would be in Berlin in sixweeks); but once his tutor was gone the mystery and horror again closed in on him.
