said I. "I had hoped your father's son would be a better
man!"

"My father," said he, "was a successful stockbroker, without any ideas
in his head save the making of money. I don't see what he has got to do
with my well-considered attitude towards life."

"Your callow attitude towards life, my poor boy," said I, "is a matter
of profound indifference to me. But I shall give orders that you are no
longer admitted to this house except in uniform."

"That's absurd," said he.

"Not at all," said I.

In obedience to the summons of the bell Sergeant Marigold appeared and
stood in his ramrod fashion by the door.

Randall came forward to my wheel-chair, with hand outstretched.

"I'm desperately sorry, Major, for this disastrous misunderstanding."

I thrust my hands beneath the light shawl that covered my legs.

"Don't be such a self-sufficient fool, Randall," I said, "as to think I
don't understand. In the present position there are no subtleties and
no complications. Good-night."

Marigold, with a wooden face, opened wide the door, and Randall, with a
shrug of the shoulders, went out.

I stayed awake the whole of that livelong night.

When I learned the death of young Oswald Fenimore, whom I loved far
more dearly than Randall Holmes, I went to bed and slept peacefully. A
gallant lad died in battle; there is nothing more to be said, nothing
more to be thought. The finality, heroically sublime, overwhelms the
poor workings of the brain. But in the case of a fellow like Randall
Holmes--well, as I have said, I did not get a wink of sleep the whole
night long.

Someone, a few months ago, told me of a young university man--Oxford or
Cambridge, I forget--who, when asked why he was not fighting, replied;
"What has the war to do with me? I disapprove of this brawling."

Was that the attitude of Randall, whom I had known all his life long? I
shivered, like a fool, all night. The only consolation I had was to
bring commonsense to my aid and to meditate on the statistical fact
that the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge were practically empty.

But my soul was sick for young Randall Holmes.

CHAPTER IV

On the wedding eve Betty brought the happy young man to dine with me.
He was in that state of unaccustomed and somewhat embarrassed bliss in
which a man would have dined happily with Beelzebub. A fresh-coloured
boy, with fair crisply set hair and a little moustache a shade or two
fairer, he kept on blushing ra