f furs and draperies.

Of course, all I could do was to scratch my thin iron-grey hair and
light a cigar and meditate in front of the fire. I knew all about
it--or at any rate I thought I did, which, as far as my meditation in
front of the fire is concerned, comes to the same thing.

Betty had cast out the base metal of her love for Leonard Boyce in
order to accept the pure gold of the love of Willie Connor. So she
thought, poor girl. She had been in love with Boyce. She had been
engaged to Boyce. Boyce, for some reason or the other, had turned her
down. Spretae injuria formae--she had cast Boyce aside. But for all her
splendid surrender of her womanhood to Willie Connor, for the sake of
her country, she still loved Leonard Boyce. Or, if she wasn't in love
with him, she couldn't get him out of her head or her senses. Something
like that, anyhow. I don't pretend to know exactly what goes on in the
soul or nature, or whatever it is, of a young girl, who has given her
heart to a man. I can only use the crude old phrase: she was still in
love (in some sort of fashion) with Leonard Boyce, and she was going to
marry, for the highest motives, somebody else.

"Confound the fellow," said I, with an irritable gesture and covered
myself with cigar ash.

She had called Boyce a devil and implied a wish that he were dead. For
myself I did not know what to make of him, for reasons which I will
state. I never approved of the engagement. As a matter of fact, I
knew--and was one of the very few who knew--of a black mark against
him--the very blackest mark that could be put against a soldier's name.
It was a puzzling business. And when I say I knew of the mark, I must
be candid and confess that its awful justification lies in the
conscience of one man living in the world to-day--if indeed he be still
alive.

Boyce was a great bronzed, bull-necked man, with an overpowering
personality. People called him the very model of a soldier. He was
always admired and feared by his men. His fierce eye and deep, resonant
voice, and a suggestion of hidden strength, even of brutality,
commanded implicit obedience. But both glance and voice would soften
caressingly and his manner convey a charm which made him popular with
men--brother officers and private soldiers alike--and with women. With
regard to the latter--to put things crudely--they saw in him the
essential, elemental male. Of that I am convinced. It was the open
secret of his many successe