"I told you I don't wish to judge of the rights and wrongs of this
incident. It's not my business. Nevertheless...."

"What on earth has he been telling you?" interrupted Lieutenant D'Hubert
in a sort of awed scare.

"I told, you already that at first when I picked him up in the garden
he was incoherent. Afterwards he was naturally reticent. But I gather at
least that he could not help himself...."

"He couldn't?" shouted Lieutenant D'Hubert. Then lowering his voice,
"And what about me? Could I help myself?"

The surgeon rose. His thoughts were running upon the flute, his constant
companion, with a consoling voice. In the vicinity of field ambulances,
after twenty-four hours' hard work, he had been known to trouble with
its sweet sounds the horrible stillness of battlefields given over
to silence and the dead. The solacing hour of his daily life was
approaching and in peace time he held on to the minutes as a miser to
his hoard.

"Of course! Of course!" he said perfunctorily. "You would think so. It's
amusing. However, being perfectly neutral and friendly to you both,
I have consented to deliver his message. Say that I am humouring an
invalid if you like. He says that this affair is by no means at an
end. He intends to send you his seconds directly he has regained his
strength--providing, of course, the army is not in the field at that
time."

"He intends--does he? Why certainly," spluttered Lieutenant D'Hubert
passionately. The secret of this exasperation was not apparent to the
visitor; but this passion confirmed him in the belief which was gaining
ground outside that some very serious difference had arisen between
these two young men. Something serious enough to wear an air of mystery.
Some fact of the utmost gravity. To settle their urgent difference
those two young men had risked being broken and disgraced at the outset,
almost, of their career. And he feared that the forthcoming inquiry
would fail to satisfy the public curiosity. They would not take the
public into their confidence as to that something which had passed
between them of a nature so outrageous as to make them face a charge of
murder--neither more nor less. But what could it be?

The surgeon was not very curious by temperament; but that question,
haunting his mind, caused him twice that evening to hold the instrument
off his lips and sit silent for a whole minute--right in the middle of a
tune--trying to form a plausible conjecture.