knew me all right and cheered up for a second, but very soon he
was back at his staring, and every word he uttered was like the careful
speech of a drunken man. A bird flew out of a bush, and I could see him
holding himself tight to keep from screaming. The best I could do was
to put a hand on his shoulder and stroke him as one strokes a
frightened horse. The sight of the price my old friend had paid didn't
put me in love with pacificism.

We talked of brother officers and South Africa, for I wanted to keep
his thoughts off the war, but he kept edging round to it.

'How long will the damned thing last?' he asked.

'Oh, it's practically over,' I lied cheerfully. 'No more fighting for
you and precious little for me. The Boche is done in all right ... What
you've got to do, my lad, is to sleep fourteen hours in the twenty-four
and spend half the rest catching trout. We'll have a shot at the
grouse-bird together this autumn and we'll get some of the old gang to
join us.'

Someone put a tea-tray on the table beside us, and I looked up to see
the very prettiest girl I ever set eyes on. She seemed little more than
a child, and before the war would probably have still ranked as a
flapper. She wore the neat blue dress and apron of a V.A.D. and her
white cap was set on hair like spun gold. She smiled demurely as she
arranged the tea-things, and I thought I had never seen eyes at once so
merry and so grave. I stared after her as she walked across the lawn,
and I remember noticing that she moved with the free grace of an
athletic boy.

'Who on earth's that?' I asked Blaikie.

'That? Oh, one of the sisters,' he said listlessly. 'There are squads
of them. I can't tell one from another.'

Nothing gave me such an impression of my friend's sickness as the fact
that he should have no interest in something so fresh and jolly as that
girl. Presently my time was up and I had to go, and as I looked back I
saw him sunk in his chair again, his eyes fixed on vacancy, and his
hands gripping his knees.

The thought of him depressed me horribly. Here was I condemned to some
rotten buffoonery in inglorious safety, while the salt of the earth
like Blaikie was paying the ghastliest price. From him my thoughts flew
to old Peter Pienaar, and I sat down on a roadside wall and read his
last letter. It nearly made me howl. Peter, you must know, had shaved
his beard and joined the Royal Flying Corps the summer before when we
got back from the Gr