hat I've felt," said he. "But it doesn't matter a
damn with regard to what I want to say. It's a question not of your
feelings towards me, but my feelings towards you. I don't want to make
polite speeches--but you're a man whom I have every reason to honour
and trust. And unlike all my other brother-officers, you have no reason
to be jealous--"

"My dear fellow," I interrupted, "what's all this about? Why jealousy?"

"You know what a pot-hunter is in athletics? A chap that is simply out
for prizes? Well, that's what a lot of them think of me. That I'm just
out to get orders and medals and distinctions and so forth."

"That's nonsense," said I. "I happen to know. Your reputation in the
brigade is unassailable."

"In the way of my having done what I'm credited with, it is," he
answered. "But all the same, they're right."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"What I say. They're right. I'm out for everything I can get. Now I'm
out for a V.C. I see you think it abominable. That's because you don't
understand. No one but I myself could understand. I feel I owe it to
myself." He looked at me for a second or two and then broke into a
sardonic sort of laugh. "I suppose you think me a conceited ass," he
continued. "Why should Leonard Boyce be such a vastly important person?
It isn't that, I assure you."

I lit a cigarette, having waved an invitation to join me, which with a
nod he refused.

"What is it, then?"

"Has it ever struck you that often a man's most merciless creditor is
himself?"

Here was a casuistical proposition thrown at my head by the last person
I should have suspected of doing so. It was immensely interesting, in
view of my long puzzledom. I spoke warily.

"That depends on the man--on the nice balance of his dual nature. On
the one side is the power to demand mercilessly; on the other, the
instinct to respond. Of course, the criminal--"

"What are you dragging in criminals for?" he said sharply. "I'm talking
about honourable men with consciences. Criminals haven't consciences.
The devil who has just been hung for murdering three women in their
baths hadn't any dual nature, as you call it. Those murders didn't
represent to him a mountain of debt to God which his soul was summoned
to discharge. He went to his death thinking himself a most unlucky and
hardly used fellow."

His fingers went instinctively into the cigarette-box. I passed him the
matches.

"Precisely," said I. "That was the point I was ab