ewhat different from most of my patients," she announced at last.

He bowed ironically. "I trust that in spite of that, I may find favour
in your sight. It's something, at any rate, not to be labelled G.S., as
we say in the Army."

"Frankly and honestly, you despise me a little?"

Vane considered her dispassionately. "Frankly and honestly, I do. And
yet . . . I don't know. Don't you see, lady, that I'm looking at your
life through my spectacles; you look at it through your own. For all I
know you may be right, and I may be wrong. In fact," he continued after
a short pause, "it's more than likely it is so. You at any rate have not
been qualifying for a lunatic asylum during the past four years."

She rose from her chair, and together they strolled towards the lawn.
Tennis was still in full swing, and for a time they watched the game in
silence.

"Do those men think as you think?" she asked him suddenly. "Are they all
asking the why and the wherefore--or is it enough for them to be just out
of it?"

"It's enough for us all for the time," he answered gravely. "And then it
tugs and it pulls and we go back to it again. . . . It's made everyone a
bit more thoughtful; it's made everyone ask the why and the wherefore,
insistently or casually, according to the manner of the brute. But Hell
will come if we don't--as a whole--find the same answer. . . ."

She idly twisted her parasol, and at that moment the cavalryman lounged
up. "Thought you'd deserted us, Miss Devereux." He glanced at Vane and
grinned. "I appeal to you," he cried, "as an infantry soldier to state
publicly whether you have ever seen a more masterly bit of scouting than
mine when the old man buttonholed you. Jove! you should have seen it.
Purple face caught him by the rhododendron bush, where he'd been
inflicting himself on me for a quarter of an hour; and in one minute by
the clock I'd got to ground in the parsley bed."

They all laughed, and for a few minutes the two men chatted with her;
then Vane disappeared into the house to write letters. It was a slow and
laborious process, and, as a rule, he wrote as few as possible. But
there was one he had to get off his conscience, though he dreaded doing
so. A promise to a dead pal is sacred. . . .

At length the scrawl was finished, and looking up from the writing table
he saw Joan Devereux passing through the hall. He got up and hurried
after her. "Would you mind addressing this for me?