g."

"M'lord," and Thompson marshalled his assistants.

Some man I didn't know began to remember things about Mandalay. "It's
queer," he said, "how people break out at times;" and told his story
of an army doctor, brave, public-spirited, and, as it happened,
deeply religious, who was caught one evening by the excitement of
plundering--and stole and hid, twisted the wrist of a boy until it
broke, and was afterwards overcome by wild remorse.

I watched Evesham listening intently. "Strange," he said, "very strange.
We are such stuff as thieves are made of. And in China, too, they
murdered people--for the sake of murdering. Apart, so to speak, from
mercenary considerations. I'm afraid there's no doubt of it in certain
cases. No doubt at all. Young soldiers fresh from German high schools
and English homes!"

"Did OUR people?" asked some patriot.

"Not so much. But I'm afraid there were cases.... Some of the Indian
troops were pretty bad."

Gane picked up the tale with confirmations.

It is all printed in the vividest way as a picture upon my memory, so
that were I a painter I think I could give the deep rich browns and warm
greys beyond the brightly lit table, the various distinguished faces,
strongly illuminated, interested and keen, above the black and white of
evening dress, the alert menservants with their heavier, clean-shaved
faces indistinctly seen in the dimness behind. Then this was coloured
emotionally for me by my aching sense of loss and sacrifice, and by
the chance trend of our talk to the breaches and unrealities of the
civilised scheme. We seemed a little transitory circle of light in a
universe of darkness and violence; an effect to which the diminishing
smell of burning rubber, the trampling of feet overhead, the swish
of water, added enormously. Everybody--unless, perhaps, it was
Evesham--drank rather carelessly because of the suppressed excitement of
our situation, and talked the louder and more freely.

"But what a flimsy thing our civilisation is!" said Evesham; "a mere
thin net of habits and associations!"

"I suppose those men came back," said Wilkins.

"Lady Paskershortly did!" chuckled Evesham.

"How do they fit it in with the rest of their lives?" Wilkins
speculated. "I suppose there's Pekin-stained police officers,
Pekin-stained J. P.'s--trying petty pilferers in the severest
manner."...

Then for a time things became preposterous. There was a sudden cascade
of water by the fireplac