548

XXVII. LOVE MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE 556

XXVIII. A SOLDIER AND A GENTLEMAN 570

XXIX. THE MAN'S POINT OF VIEW 578

XXX. THE LINE OF RETREAT 588

PART I

CHAPTER I

THE LESSON

"Then he's such a prig!" said Olga.

"You should never use a word you can't define," observed Nick, from the
depths of the hammock in which his meagre person reposed at length.

She made a face at him, and gave the hammock a vicious twitch which
caused him to rock with some violence for several seconds. As he was
wont pathetically to remark, everyone bullied him because he was small
and possessed only one arm, having shed the other by inadvertence
somewhere on the borders of the Indian Empire.

Certainly Olga--his half-brother's eldest child--treated him with scant
respect, though she never allowed anyone else to be other than polite to
him in her hearing. But then she and Nick had been pals from the
beginning of things, and this surely entitled her to a certain licence
in her dealings with him. Nick, too, was such a darling; he never minded
anything.

Having duly punished him for snubbing her, she returned with serenity to
the work upon her lap.

"You see," she remarked thoughtfully, "the worst of it is he really is
a bit of a genius. And one can't sit on genius--with comfort. It sort of
flames out where you least expect it."

"Highly unpleasant, I should think," agreed Nick.

"Yes; and he has such a disgusting fashion of behaving as if--as if one
were miles beneath his notice," proceeded Olga. "And I'm not a chicken,
you know, Nick, I'm twenty."

"A vast age!" said Nick.

For which remark she gave him another jerk which set him swinging like a
pendulum.

"Well, I've got a little sense anyhow," she remarked.

"But not much," said Nick. "Or you would know that that sort of
treatment after muffins for tea is calculated to produce indigestion in
a very acute form, peculiarly distressing to the beholder."

"Oh, I'm sorry! I forgot the muffins." Olga laid a restraining hand upon
the hammock. "But do you like him, Nick? Honestly now!"

"My dear child, I never like anyone till I've seen him at his worst.
Drawing-room manners never attract me."

"But this man hasn't got any manners at all," objected Olga. "And he's
so horribly satirical. It's like having a stinging-nettle in the house.
I believe--just because he's clever in hi