his duty to
withdraw for ever from her life. His exact words, however, were: "You
know how I have always hated slang, how it has jarred upon me, often
to your amusement, when you have used it. But I have learned in the
past months how expressive it may be. Through slang I've learned what
I am. I am a born 'rotter.' A girl like you can't possibly love and
marry a rotter. So the rotter, having a lingering sense of decency,
makes his bow and exits--God knows where."

Peggy, red-eyed, adrift, rudderless on a frightening sea, called her
father into her bedroom at the Savoy and showed him the letter. He
drew out and adjusted his round tortoise-shell-rimmed reading-glasses
and read it.

"That's a miraculously new Doggie," said he.

Peggy clutched the edges of his coat.

"I've never heard you call him that before."

"It has never been worth while," said the Dean.

CHAPTER VIII

At the Savoy, during the first stupefaction of his misery, Doggie had
not noticed particularly the prevalence of khaki. At the Russell it
dwelt insistent, like the mud on Salisbury Plain. Men that might have
been the twin brethren of his late brother officers were everywhere,
free, careless, efficient. The sight of them added the gnaw of envy to
his heartache. Even in his bedroom he could hear the jingle of their
spurs and their cheery voices as they clanked along the corridor. On
the third day after his migration he took a bold step and moved into
lodgings in Woburn Place. Here at least he could find quiet,
untroubled by heart-rending sights and sounds. He spent most of his
time in dull reading and dispirited walking. For he could walk now--so
much had his training done for him--and walk for many miles without
fatigue. For all the enjoyment he got out of it, he might as well have
marched round a prison yard. Indeed there were some who tramped the
prison yards with keener zest. They were buoyed up with the hope of
freedom, they could look forward to the ever-approaching day when they
should be thrown once more into the glad whirl of life. But the
miraculously new Doggie had no hope. He felt for ever imprisoned in
his shame. His failure preyed on his mind.

He dallied with thoughts of suicide. Why hadn't he salved, at any
rate, his service revolver? Then he remembered the ugly habits of the
unmanageable thing--how it always kicked its muzzle up in the air.
Would he have been able even to shoot himself with it? And he smiled
in self-deri