ad finally landed in a heap in Leicester Square--with the
hatless gentleman underneath. And Vane--being fleet of foot, had
finally had the supreme joy of watching from afar his disloyal opponent
being escorted to Vine Street, in a winded condition, by a very big
policeman. . . .

Sometimes he wondered if other people ever felt like that; if they were
ever overcome with an irresistible desire to be offensive. It struck
him that the war had not cured this failing; if anything it had made it
stronger. And the sight of these two fat, oily specimens complacently
discussing business, while a woman--in some poky house in Balham--was
waiting to hear the last message from her dead, made him gnash his
teeth.

Of course it was all quite wrong. No well-brought-up and decorous
Englishman had any right to feel so annoyed with another man's face
that he longed to hit it with a stick. But Vane was beginning to doubt
whether he had been well brought up; he was quite certain that he was
not decorous. He was merely far more natural than he had ever been
before; he had ceased to worry over the small things.

And surely the two other occupants of the carriage were very small. At
least they seemed so to him. For all he knew, or cared, they might
each of them be in control of a Government Department; that failed to
alter their littleness.

Fragments of their conversation came to him over the rattle of the
wheels, and he became more and more irate. The high price of whisky
was one source of complaint--it appeared, according to one of them,
that it was all going to France, which caused a shortage for those at
home. Then the military situation. . . . Impossible, grotesque. . . .
Somebody ought to be hanged for having allowed such a thing to happen.
After four years to be forced back--inexcusable. What was wanted was
somebody with a business brain to run the Army. . . . In the meantime
their money was being wasted, squandered, frittered away. . . .

Vane grew rampant in his corner as he listened; his mental language
became impossibly lurid. He felt that he would willingly have given a
thousand or two to plant them both into that bit of the outpost line,
where a month before he had crawled round on his belly at dawn to see
his company. Grey-faced and grey-coated with the mud, their eyes had
been clear and steady and cheerful, even if their chins were covered
with two days' growth. And their pay was round about a shilling a
da