to his own
table, comes in to breakfast with shaking hands, flushed face, and
passes your table with unseeing eyes, you would probably conclude that
he was under the influence of liquor, and in your English way you would
severely blame him, not so much for the moral turpitude involved in his
excess as for the bad taste, which prompted him to show himself in public
in such a condition. If, on reaching his place, the young man's conduct
took the additional extravagant form of picking up a table-knife and
sticking it into the table in front of him, you would probably enlarge
your previous conclusion by admitting the hypotheses of drugs or
dementia to account for such remarkable behaviour.

All these things were done by the young man at the alcove table in the
breakfast room of the Grand Hotel, Durrington, on an October morning in
the year 1916; but Colwyn, who was only half an Englishman, and,
moreover, had an original mind, did not attribute them to drink,
morphia, or madness. Colwyn flattered himself that he knew the outward
signs of these diseases too well to be deceived into thinking that the
splendid specimen of young physical manhood at the far table was the
victim of any of them. His own impression was that it was a case of
shell-shock. It was true that, apart from the doubtful evidence of a
bronzed skin and upright frame, there was nothing about him to suggest
that he had been a soldier: no service lapel or regimental badge in his
grey Norfolk jacket. But an Englishman of his class would be hardly
likely to wear either once he had left the Army. It was almost certain
that he must have seen service in the war, and by no means improbable
that he had been bowled over by shell-shock, like many thousands more of
equally splendid specimens of young manhood. Any other conclusion to
account for the strange condition of a young man like him seemed
unworthy and repellent.

"It _must_ be shell-shock, and a very bad case--probably supposed to be
cured, and sent up here to recuperate," thought Colwyn. "I'll keep an
eye on him."

As Colwyn resumed his breakfast it occurred to him that some of the
other guests might have been alarmed by the young man's behaviour, and
he cast his eyes round the room to see if anybody else had noticed him.

There were about thirty guests in the big breakfast apartment, which had
been built to accommodate five times the number--a charming, luxuriously
furnished place, with massive white pillars