ng to dissipate it. "Ah, yes! Once
we had the day of our lives together, he and I. We got a day off to go
and see a new trench mortar, and we did have a time."

"Trench mortar--what is that?"

He explained.

"But tell me how it works," she insisted, not because she had the
slightest genuine interest in the technical details of war--for she
had not--but because she desired to help him to change the mood of the
scene.

"Well, it's not so easy, you know. It was a four and a half pound
shell, filled with gun-cotton slabs and shrapnel bullets packed in
sawdust. The charge was black powder in a paper bag, and you stuck
it at the bottom end of the pipe and put a bit of fuse into the
touch-hole--but, of course, you must take care it penetrates the
charge. The shell-fuse has a pinner with a detonator with the right
length of fuse shoved into it; you wrap some clay round the end of the
fuse to stop the flash of the charge from detonating the shell. Well,
then you load the shell--"

She comprehended simply nothing, and the man, professionally absorbed,
seemed to have no perception that she was comprehending nothing. She
scarcely even listened. Her face was set in a courteous, formal
smile; but all the time she was thinking that the man, in spite of
his qualities, must be lacking in character to give a watch away to
a woman to whom he had not been talking for ten minutes. His lack of
character was shown also in his unshamed confession concerning his
real enemy. Some men would bare their souls to a _cocotte_ in
a fashion that was flattering neither to themselves nor to the
_cocotte_, and Christine never really respected such men. She did
not really respect this man, but respected, and stood in awe of,
his mysticism; and, further, her instinct to satisfy him, to make a
spoiled boy of him, was not in the least weakened. Then, just as the
man was in the middle of his description of the functioning of the
trench mortar, the telephone-bell rang, and Christine excused herself.

The telephone was in the bedroom, not by the bedside--for such a
situation had its inconveniences--but in the farthest corner, between
the window and the washstand. As she went to the telephone she was
preoccupied by one of the major worries of her vocation, the worry of
keeping clients out of each other's sight. She wondered who could be
telephoning to her on Sunday evening. Not Gilbert, for Gilbert never
telephoned on Sunday except in the morning. She ins