rly was afraid of really meeting his master. His
subconsciousness remembered those steely blue eyes and the harsh brows,
and did not intend to meet them again. So he always stared past his
master, and avoided him. Also, in a little anxiety, he waited for the
three months to have gone, when his time would be up. He began to feel a
constraint in the Captain's presence, and the soldier even more than the
officer wanted to be left alone, in his neutrality as servant.

He had served the Captain for more than a year, and knew his duty. This
he performed easily, as if it were natural to him. The officer and his
commands he took for granted, as he took the sun and the rain, and he
served as a matter of course. It did not implicate him personally.

But now if he were going to be forced into a personal interchange with
his master he would be like a wild thing caught, he felt he must get
away.

But the influence of the young soldier's being had penetrated through
the officer's stiffened discipline, and perturbed the man in him.
He, however, was a gentleman, with long, fine hands and cultivated
movements, and was not going to allow such a thing as the stirring of
his innate self. He was a man of passionate temper, who had always kept
himself suppressed. Occasionally there had been a duel, an outburst
before the soldiers. He knew himself to be always on the point of
breaking out. But he kept himself hard to the idea of the Service.
Whereas the young soldier seemed to live out his warm, full nature, to
give it off in his very movements, which had a certain zest, such as
wild animals have in free movement. And this irritated the officer more
and more.

In spite of himself, the Captain could not regain his neutrality of
feeling towards his orderly. Nor could he leave the man alone. In spite
of himself, he watched him, gave him sharp orders, tried to take up as
much of his time as possible. Sometimes he flew into a rage with the
young soldier, and bullied him. Then the orderly shut himself off, as it
were out of earshot, and waited, with sullen, flushed face, for the
end of the noise. The words never pierced to his intelligence, he made
himself, protectively, impervious to the feelings of his master.

He had a scar on his left thumb, a deep seam going across the knuckle.
The officer had long suffered from it, and wanted to do something to it.
Still it was there, ugly and brutal on the young, brown hand. At last
the Captain's reserv