ardice who have never smelt the odour
of corruption. . . .

"What's your motive? Some misbegotten sense of duty?"

"Partly," said Val, turning from the window. How like his eyes
were to his young sister's! The impression was unwelcome, and
Lawrence flung it off. "I ought never to have given way to you.
I ought to have faced Wynn-West and let him deal with me as he
thought fit. After all, I was of no standing in the regiment.
A boy of nineteen--what on earth would it have signified? I
was so very young."

Nineteen! yes, one called a lad young at nineteen even in those
pitiless days. Under normal conditions he would have had two or
three years' more training before he was required to shoulder the
responsibilities and develop the braced muscles of manhood.

"Anyhow it's all over now--"

"No, you forget." A wave of colour swept over Val's face but his
voice was steady. "Through me the regiment holds a distinction
it hasn't earned, and the distinction is in hands that don't
deserve to hold it. That isn't consonant with the traditions of
the service."

"Oh, when it comes to the honour of the Army--!" Lawrence jeered
at him. "There speaks the soldier born and bred. But I was only
a 'temporary.' Give me a personal reason."

"Well, I can do that too! I hate sailing under false colours.
The good folk of Chilmark; my own people; Bernard, Laura . . . ."
Lawrence's eyes began to sparkle: when a man's voice deepens over
a woman's name--! "Oh, I dare say nothing will ever come of it,"
Val resumed after a moment: "my father may live another thirty
years, and by that time I should be too old to stand in a white
sheet. Or perhaps I shall only tell one or two people--"

"Mrs. Clowes?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"You would like to tell my cousin and his wife?"

"I should like to feel myself a free agent, which I'm not now,
because I'm under parole to you."

"And so you will remain," said Lawrence coldly.

"You mean that?"

"Thoroughly. I've no wish to distress you, Val, but I'm no more
convinced now than I was ten years ago that you can be trusted to
judge for yourself. You were an impulsive boy then with remarkably
little self-control: you're--forgive my saying so--an impulsive man
now, capable of doing things that in five minutes you would be
uncommonly sorry for. How long would Bernard keep your secret? If
I'm not much mistaken you would lose your billet and the whole county
would hear why. The whole th