re or less."

"My letter!" groaned Raven. "If ever a chap was punished for a minute's
drunkenness----"

"Drunkenness?" interrupted Amelia incisively.

"Oh, drunkenness of feeling--irresponsibility--don't you know? Didn't
you ever hear of a chap's killing himself in a minute of acute
discontent because he couldn't stand the blooming show an instant
longer? Well, I didn't kill myself. I did something worse. I wrote a
letter, and, by an evil chance, it was mailed, and Dick, like a fool,
sent it on to you."

"Dick did absolutely right," said Dick's mother conclusively. "We won't
discuss that. We'll go into the thing itself."

"What the deuce is the thing?" Raven inquired. "The letter, or my
bursting into tears, like a high-strung maiden lady, and calling Dick in
to be cried over?"

"Don't evade it," she charged him, with unabated gravity. "We mustn't,
either of us. You know what I mean--_cafard_."

"_Cafard!_" Then he remembered Dick also had caught up the word, like a
missile, and pelted him with it. He gulped. Ordinary speech wasn't going
to be adequate. She belonged to this infernal age that lived by phrases.
If he told her he was still of the opinion that the world was a
disordered place of torment you could only exist in by ignoring its real
complexion, she would merely consign him to a cell more scientifically
padded, and stand gazing at him through the bars, in solemn sympathy.
"So I've gone _cafard_," he said slowly, looking down at the fire and
wondering how to answer a fool according to her folly. Or was she
incredibly right? Had he some creeping sickness of the brain, the very
nature of which implied his own insensitiveness to it? "Or do you say
'got' _cafard_? And what's your personal impression of _cafard_,
anyway?"

She had her answer ready. From the little bag in her lap she took out a
small sheaf of folded papers, memorandum slips, they seemed to be, and
whirled them over in capable fingers.

"It ought to be here," she said absorbedly. "Yes, here it is. No, it
isn't either. It must be among my club notes. What Galsworthy says about
it, you know. He makes it so clear. Just what they mean by it, the
French, how you simply go to pieces. You know, John. Of course you
know."

"Yes," said Raven drily, "I heard of it remotely among the boys."

"No wonder it happened to you. Really, you know, John, you ought not to
have gone over there at all, not at your age. It was fine of you. I'm
not denying that.