day. Always correct in his behaviour. One had to
trust him. The colonel repressed manfully an immense curiosity.

"H'm! You affirm that as a man and an officer.... No option? Eh?"

"As an officer, an officer of the Fourth Hussars, too," repeated
Lieutenant D'Hubert, "I had not. And that is the bottom of the affair,
colonel."

"Yes. But still I don't see why to one's colonel... A colonel is a
father--_que diable_."

Lieutenant D'Hubert ought not to have been allowed out as yet. He
was becoming aware of his physical insufficiency with humiliation and
despair--but the morbid obstinacy of an invalid possessed him--and at
the same time he felt, with dismay, his eyes filling with water. This
trouble seemed too big to handle. A tear fell down the thin, pale cheek
of Lieutenant D'Hubert. The colonel turned his back on him hastily. You
could have heard a pin drop.

"This is some silly woman story--is it not?"

The chief spun round to seize the truth, which is not a beautiful shape
living in a well but a shy bird best caught by stratagem. This was
the last move of the colonel's diplomacy, and he saw the truth shining
unmistakably in the gesture of Lieutenant D'Hubert, raising his weak
arms and his eyes to heaven in supreme protest.

"Not a woman affair--eh?" growled the colonel, staring hard. "I don't
ask you who or where. All I want to know is whether there is a woman in
it?"

Lieutenant D'Hubert's arms dropped and his weak voice was pathetically
broken.

"Nothing of the kind, mon colonel."

"On your honour?" insisted the old warrior.

"On my honour."

"Very well," said the colonel thoughtfully, and bit his lip. The
arguments of Lieutenant D'Hubert, helped by his liking for the person,
had convinced him. Yet it was highly improper that his intervention, of
which he had made no secret, should produce no visible effect. He kept
Lieutenant D'Hubert a little longer and dismissed him kindly.

"Take a few days more in bed, lieutenant. What the devil does the
surgeon mean by reporting you fit for duty?"

On coming out of the colonel's quarters, Lieutenant D'Hubert said
nothing to the friend who was waiting outside to take him home. He said
nothing to anybody. Lieutenant D'Hubert made no confidences. But in the
evening of that day the colonel, strolling under the elms growing near
his quarters in the company of his second in command opened his lips.

"I've got to the bottom of this affair," he remarked.

The lieuten