So I did my
bit where headquarters told me I could do it or go home. And all I have
got out of it is the veiled contempt of nearly everybody I know, my
father included, for not killing Germans with my own hands."

MacRae kept still. It was a curious statement. Young Gower twisted and
ground his boot heel into the soft earth.

"Being a rich man's son has proved a considerable handicap in my case,"
he continued at last. "I was petted and coddled all my life. Then the
war came along. Everybody expected a lot of me. And I am as good as
excommunicated for not coming up to expectations. Beautiful irony. If my
eyes had been normal, I should be another of Vancouver's heroes,--alive
or dead. The spirit doesn't seem to count. The only thing that matters,
evidently, is that I stayed on the safe side of the Channel. They take
it for granted that I did so because I valued my own skin above
everything. Idiots."

"You can easily explain," MacRae suggested.

"I won't. I'd see them all in Hades first," Norman growled. "I'll admit
it stings me to have people think so and rub it in, in their polite way.
But I'm getting more or less indifferent. There are plenty of real
people in England who know I did the only work I could do and did it
well. Do you imagine I fancied sitting on the side lines when all the
fellows I knew were playing a tough game? But I can't go about telling
that to people at home. I'll be damned if I will. A man has to learn to
stand the gaff sometime, and the last year or so seems to be my period
of schooling."

"Why tell all this to me?" MacRae asked quietly.

Norman rose from the log. He chucked the butt of his cigarette away. He
looked directly, rather searchingly, at MacRae.

"Really, I don't know," he said in a flat, expressionless. Then he
walked on.

MacRae watched him pass out of sight among the thickets. Young Gower had
succeeded in dispelling the passive contentment of basking in the sun.
He had managed to start buzzing trains of not too agreeable reflection.
MacRae got to his feet before long and tramped back around the Cove's
head. He had known, of course, that the Gowers still made more or less
use of their summer cottage. But he had not come in personal contact
with any of them since the night Betty had given him that new,
disturbing angle from which to view her. He had avoided her purposely.
Now he was afflicted with a sudden restlessness, a desire for other
voices and faces besides his own, an