questioner, understanding neither his tone nor look.

A sudden silence had fallen near them; it spread like a widening ring
upon disturbed waters.

Major Burton spoke, in his voice, a queer, scoffing inflection. "He was
absent on Home leave anyway. We all understood--were given to
understand--that you had sent him an urgent summons."

"I?" For an instant Bernard Monck stared in genuine bewilderment. Then
abruptly he turned to his brother who was listening inscrutably on the
other side of the table. "Some mistake here, Everard," he said. "You
haven't been Home for seven years or more have you?"

There was dead silence in the room as he put the question--a silence, so
full of expectancy as to be almost painful. Across the table the eyes of
the two brothers met and held.

Then, "I have not," said Everard Monck with quiet finality.

There was no note of challenge in his voice, neither was there any
dismay. But the effect of his words upon every man present was as if he
had flung a bomb into their midst. The silence endured tensely for a
couple of seconds, then there came a hard breath and a general movement
as if by common consent the company desired to put an end to a
situation, that had become unendurable.

Bertie Oakes dug Tommy in the ribs, but Tommy was as white as death and
did not even feel it. Something had happened, something that made him
feel giddy and very sick. That significant silence was to him nothing
short of tragedy. He had seen his hero topple at a touch from the high
pinnacle on which he had placed him, and he felt as if the very ground
under his feet had become a quicksand.

As in a maze of shifting impressions he heard Sir Reginald valiantly
covering the sudden breach, talking inconsequently in a language which
Tommy could not even recognize as his own. And the Colonel was seconding
his efforts, while Major Burton sat frowning at the end of his cigar as
if he were trying to focus his sight upon something infinitesimal and
elusive. No one looked at Monck, in fact everyone seemed studiously to
avoid doing so. Even his brother seemed lost in meditation with his eyes
fixed immovably upon a lamp that hung from the ceiling and swayed
ponderously in the draught.

Then at last there came a definite move, and Bertie Oakes poked him
again. "Are you moonstruck?" he said.

Tommy got up with the rest, still feeling sick and oddly unsure of
himself. He pushed his brother-subaltern aside as if he had been