raw either for the paternal handicap or
for the glories of the Wharton connection. He took his
love-affair as simply as his cricket and with the same bold
confidence. Laura was what he wanted; she would fit into her
surroundings at Wanhope as delicately as an old picture fits
into an old frame, and one could leave her about--so he put
it to himself--without fear of her getting damaged. When Tom
Morrison, shrewd business man, dropped a hint about the rashness
of marrying the daughter of a scamp like Ferdinand Selincourt,
Bernard merely stared at him and let the indiscretion go in
silence. He can scarcely be said to have loved his bride, for
up to the time of the wedding his nature was not much more
developed than that of a prize bull, but he considered her a
very pretty woman, and his faith in her was a religion.

So they were married, and went to Eastbourne for their honeymoon:
an average match, not marked by passion on either side, but
destined apparently to an average amount of comfort and good
will. They had ten gay days before Laura was left on a victoria
platform, gallantly smiling with pale lips and waving her
handkerchief after the train that carried Bernard back to the
front.

Five months later on the eve of the Armistice he was flung out
of the service, a broken man, paralysed below the waist, cursing
every one who came near him and chiefly the surgeons for not
letting him die. No one ever desired life more passionately than
Bernard desired death. For some time he clung to the hope that
his mind would wear his body out. But his body was too young,
too strong, too tenacious of earth to be betrayed by the renegade
mind.

There came a day when Clowes felt his youth welling up in him
like sap in a fallen tree: new energy throbbed in his veins, his
heart beat strong and even, it was hard to believe that he could
not get off his bed if he liked and go down to the playing fields
or throw his leg over a horse. This mood fastened on him without
warning in a Surbiton hospital after a calm night without a
sleeping draught, when through his open window he could see green
branches waving in sunlight, and hear the cries of men playing
cricket and the smack of the driven ball: and it was torture.
Tears forced their way suddenly into Bernard's eyes. His nurse,
who had watched not a few reluctant recoveries, went out of the
room. Then his great chest heaved, and he sobbed aloud, lying
on his back with face unhi