fairly let himself go. He
careered over the field of sport, interrupting his own serious
professional _elan_ with all sorts of childlike and spontaneous gambols.
In some of his turns he was entirely lovable. It was clear that Reggie
loved him as you love a strange little animal at play, or any vital
object that diverts you. From his manner I gathered that, provided he
were not committed to closer acquaintance with Jevons, he was willing
enough to snatch the passing joy of him.

I do not know by what transitions they slid together on to the Boer War.
The Boer War happened to be Reggie's own ground. He had served in it. You
would have said that Jevons had served in it too, to hear him. He traced
the course of the entire campaign for Reggie's benefit. He showed him by
what error each regrettable incident (as they called them then) had
occurred, and by what strategy it might have been prevented.

And Reggie--who had been there--listened respectfully to Jevons.

Viola had lured me into a corner where only scraps of their conversation
reached us from time to time. So I do not know whether it was in
connection with the Boer War that Jevons began telling Reggie that
journalism was a rotten game; that from birth he had been baulked of his
ambition. He had wanted to be tall and handsome. He had wanted to be
valorous and athletic. And here he was sent into the world undersized and
not even passably good-looking. And what--he asked Reggie--_could_ he do
with a physique like his?

I remember Reggie telling Jevons his physique didn't matter a hang. He
could be a war correspondent in the next war. I remember Jevons saying in
an awful voice: That was just it. He couldn't be anything in the next
war--and, by God, there was a big war coming--he gave it eight years--but
he couldn't be in it. He was an arrant coward.

That, he said, was his tragedy. His cowardice--his distaste for
danger--his certainty that if any danger were ever to come near him he
would funk.

And I remember Reggie saying, "My dear fellow, if you've the courage to
say so--" and Jevons beating off this consolation with a funny gesture of
despair. And then his silence.

It was as if suddenly, in the midst of his gambolling, little Jevons had
fallen into an abyss. He sat there, at the bottom of the pit, staring at
us in the misery of the damned.

I looked at Viola. Her eyelids drooped; her head drooped. Her whole body
drooped under the affliction of his stare, an