looking at her."

"You haven't--"

"Yes, I have. She's had her new coat on for the last three weeks. You
couldn't take her out as she was, all black and white. She'd have been
knocked to bits before we'd begun our job. So I had her painted. She's a
good enough target for shell-fire as she is."

"You don't mean," I said, "that you're going out?"

"What else have I been meaning ever since there was a war?"

"But--where are you going _to_?"

"Belgium," he said. He added that it was the only blessed place he
_could_ get to.

"And what are you going to do when you get there?"

He said he was going to scout for wounded, of course.

And as he saw me still incredulous he told me how he'd managed it. He had
gone every day for three weeks to the Belgian Legation and worried the
Belgian Minister into a state of nervous prostration. And when the
Minister was at his worst and was obliged to leave things a bit to his
secretaries, he'd gone to the secretaries and worried _them_ till the
First Secretary had given him his passport and a letter of introduction
to the President of the Belgian Red Cross Society at Ghent. And he had
gone to Ghent--went there last week--and he had seen the President and
talked to him. He had talked for ten minutes before his services had been
accepted by the Belgian Red Cross.

And he was going out to-morrow.

"It's just taken me six weeks to do it. I gave myself six weeks."

Of course I congratulated him. But I couldn't realize it. The whole thing
seemed incredible. Jevons in his khaki was incredible. The transformed
motor-car was incredible, as a thing that Jevons was concerned with.
Above all, it was incredible that he should have sacrificed his god.

I couldn't believe it until Kendal, the chauffeur, turned up, also in
khaki and with a Red Cross brassard on his right arm. Kendal was credible
enough; he looked as if he had been going to the war all his life. It was
evident that he was keen on the adventure. It was also evident that he
adored Jevons more than ever. By watching Kendal in the act of adoration
and keeping my eyes fixed on him I was able to take it in, and to assent
to the statement that Jevons was going to the war.

He was of course if Kendal said so.

Kendal was asking me what I thought of the car.

"She's not the beauty she was, sir," said Kendal. "I don't suppose Mr.
Jevons will care much how he knocks her about now. And they do say the
Belgium roads is fair destruction