“Who’s my best subaltern, Straker?” asked the Colonel as they strode through the darkness.

The other hesitated. “C-Conway’s very good, sir.”

“And what about Bromley? He’s seen service, you know. ...” Stark stood still for a moment.... “I wish to goodness you’d learn to read a map, Straker. Can’t put you in for promotion till you can.”

“I—I know. I’m rotten at it, sir.”

They walked on.

“Jameson’s c-coming along very well with his gun-drill, sir”—Charlie Straker, by virtue of knowledge, acted as unofficial instructor to the Brigade—“and he’s r-rather good with horses.”

“I’ve got other plans for P.J. Between you and me, Straker, Torrington’s fed-up with being indoors. And I can’t very well have a V.C. for Adjutant. He wants to go back to a Battery. My opinion is that he’s too ill to command one: still, I’m going to try P.J. in the Orderly Room. He’s been running offices all his life, and he ought to be able to pick up the work....”

Arrived at No. 6 Brunswick Terrace, the flat which Peter and Patricia had taken when they gave up the house in Lowndes Square, the Weasel led way up the one flight of stairs; and pushed open the front-door into a rather ornate hall. They peeled off their mackintoshes; hung caps and riding-canes on the crowded hat-stand; and walked into the drawing-room.

Alice Stark and Patricia were sitting on the sofa under the rose-curtained window. In front of a small fire, stood Peter—miraculously without a cigar. Jack Baynet, a little aged by ten months of active service, lounged in a big armchair, glass at his side, talking to Bromley.

“Filthy stuff that new Boche gas,” he was saying.... “Hello, Straker. Congratulations on getting your commission. ...” He got up and the two shook hands.... “Lucky devil not to be in that last show up at Wipers. The Zouaves sneaked most of our horses when they panicked....”

The five men began talking “gas”—which had just been employed for the first time. Soon, Alice joined them, leaving Patricia alone.

Looking at the five in khaki, listening to the military “shop,” she could not help contrasting that evening with one, over a year ago, when she had entertained Jack and her father in the big drawing-room at Lowndes Square. Peter, she remembered, had been in Hamburg! And now, Peter was a soldier. They lived in a different world: a world of new values. Somehow, she felt years younger....

“If it hadn’t have been for the Canadians, the Boche....” she heard her brother’s voice calmly detailing undreamed of heroisms.

A world of new values, of wider horizons! And for sign of it she, Patricia Jameson, the most reasonable of young women, had fallen in love with her own husband. She wanted to—to surrender herself to him, just once, body and soul, utterly, absolutely, to tell him that she was his—his—his woman to do with as he would....

Patricia reined in imagination as a rough-rider reins back a pulling horse.

“They just stuffed their handkerchiefs over their mouths and hung on. Discipline? That’s what I call discipline—just hanging on.”

“You’ll be fighting in respirators next.” The Weasel’s voice interrupted her brother’s story....

Imagination got away with her again. Happy? Yes, in a way she was happy. Only.... Why didn’t Peter realize things? Why couldn’t Peter work a little less strenuously? He took soldiering as he had taken business. It absorbed him. When he mounted his horse of a morning—Driver Jelks holding out the stirrup—his face wore the old “office look.” ... Of an evening, he studied his new profession.... And of course, he was smoking too much.... The children said Daddy was worried.... How did they know? ... Perhaps he still regretted Nirvana.... Oh, why couldn’t she console him—time, time flew—and soon, a black hand must stretch out across the sea, take him from her—perhaps for ever....

“You’re looking very serious, Mrs. P.J.” Bromley lounged across to her.

“Am I?” she smiled at him.

“You won’t desert us when we go into Camp, Mrs. P.J.?” He pulled gravely at his moustaches. “I was just wondering if you’d help me with the Mess. Colonel says men are no good at these things. You might help a fellow, Mrs. P.J.?”

“Why don’t you get Mutton’s to do the whole thing for you, Mr. Bromley?”

“Colonel says we ought to do it ourselves. It trains the cooks, you see. But I don’t know much about it. In South Africa, we ate when we could....”

They began a grave discussion on crockery, mess-furniture, groceries, the wine-cellar: a discussion which lasted till the party broke up. Jack Baynet had taken a room at the Metropole; walked home with Alice and her husband. Bromley and Straker stayed for a last drink; departed together.

“Rather amusing, I thought”—commented Peter to his wife—“that first meeting between your brother and Mrs. Weasel. She looked as though she’d like to kiss him.”

“My dear Peter....”

“Well, didn’t she?”

Patricia looked her husband straight in the face. Then she said deliberately: “You don’t know much about women, old thing. Alice is madly in love with the Colonel. She’d no more dream of letting another man kiss her than,” a pause “I should.” She marched out of the room, gold head high.

“I wonder what’s worrying Pat?” thought Peter as he picked a small cigar from the box on the mantelpiece; took up his “Manual of Field Engineering,” and began to study section 39, Cover for Artillery.