After that
they would wait till night came, then burn a peculiar little lamp with
a peculiar little smell, and, in the full glare of the gaslight,
stand about on chairs, with slippers, and their eyes fixed on true or
imaginary beasts. Then would fall little slaps, making little messes,
and little joyous or doleful cries would arise: "I've got that one!"
"Oh, John, I missed him!" And in the middle of the room, the Colonel, in
pyjamas, and spectacles (only worn in very solemn moments, low down on
his nose), would revolve slowly, turning his eyes, with that look in
them of out-facing death which he had so long acquired, on every inch
of wall and ceiling, till at last he would say: "Well, Dolly, that's the
lot!" At which she would say: "Give me a kiss, dear!" and he would kiss
her, and get into his bed.

There was, then, no mosquito, save that general ghost of him which
lingered in the mind of one devoted to her husband. Spying out his
profile, for he was lying on his back, she refrained from saying:
"John, are you awake?" A whiffling sound was coming from a nose, to
which--originally straight--attention to military duties had given a
slight crook, half an inch below the level of grizzled eyebrows raised a
little, as though surprised at the sounds beneath. She could hardly see
him, but she thought: "How good he looks!" And, in fact, he did. It was
the face of a man incapable of evil, having in its sleep the candour of
one at heart a child--that simple candour of those who have never known
how to seek adventures of the mind, and have always sought adventures of
the body. Then somehow she did say:

"John! Are you asleep?"

The Colonel, instantly alive, as at some old-time attack, answered:

"Yes."

"That poor young man!"

"Which?"

"Mark Lennan. Haven't you seen?"

"What?"

"My dear, it was under your nose. But you never do see these things!"

The Colonel slowly turned his head. His wife was an imaginative woman!
She had always been so. Dimly he perceived that something romantic was
about to come from her. But with that almost professional gentleness
of a man who has cut the heads and arms off people in his time, he
answered:

"What things?"

"He picked up her handkerchief."

"Whose?"

"Olive's. He put it in his pocket. I distinctly saw him."

There was silence; then Mrs. Ercott's voice rose again, impersonal, far
away.

"What always astonishes me about young people is the way they think
they're not s