life, at
whose terrors he too would have to snap a disdainful finger. I had felt
deep pity for him; but if pity is indeed akin to love, it is a very
poor relation. Now I had cast pity and such like superior sentiment
aside and accepted him as a sworn brother. The sins, whatever they
were, that lay on the man's conscience mattered nothing. He had paid in
splendid penance and in terrible penalty.

I should have liked to express to him something of this surge of
emotion. But I could find no words. As a race, our emotions are not
facile, and therefore we lack the necessary practice in expressing
them. When they do come, they come all of a heap and scare us out of
our wits and leave us speechless. So the immediate outcome of all this
psychological upheaval was that we went on smoking and said nothing
more about it. As far as I remember we started talking about the
recruiting muddle, as to which our views most vigorously coincided.

We parted cheerily. It was only when I got outside the room that the
ghastly irony of the situation again made my heart as lead. We passed
by the conservatory and the statuary and down the great staircase, but
the ghosts had gone. Yet I cast a wistful glance at the spot--it was
just under that Cuyp with the flashing white horse--where we had sat
twenty years ago. But the new tragedy had rendered the memory less
poignant.

"It's a dreadful thing about the Colonel, sir," said Marigold as we
drove off.

"More dreadful than anyone can imagine," said I.

"What he's going to do with himself is what I'm wondering," said
Marigold.

What indeed? The question went infinitely deeper than the practical
dreams of Marigold's philosophy. My honest fellow saw but the
outside--the full-blooded man of action cabined in his lifelong
darkness. I, to whom chance had revealed more, trembled at the
contemplation of his future. The man, goaded by the Furies, had rushed
into the jaws of death. Those jaws, by some divine ordinance, had
ruthlessly closed against him. The Furies meanwhile attended him
unrelenting. Whither now would they goad him? Into madness? I doubted
it. In spite of his contradictory nature, he did not seem to be the
sort of man who would go mad. He could exercise over himself too
reasoned a control. Yet here were passions and despairs seething
without an outlet. What would be the end? It is true that he had
achieved glory. To the end of his life, wherever he went, he would
command the honour and