silly," Mrs. Wallace had answered.

It would be silly. After all, one has only one life. But sometimes one
has to do silly things.

* * *

The whim seized James to visit the Larchers, and one day he set out for
Ashford, near which they lived.... He was very modest about his attempt
to save their boy, and told himself that such courage as it required was
purely instinctive. He had gone back without realising in the least that
there was any danger. Seeing young Larcher wounded and helpless, it had
seemed the obvious thing to get him to a place of safety. In the heat of
action fellows were constantly doing reckless things. Everyone had a
sort of idea that he, at least, would not be hit; and James, by no means
oppressed with his own heroism, knew that courageous deeds without
number were performed and passed unseen. It was a mere chance that the
incident in which he took part was noticed.

Again, he had from the beginning an absolute conviction that his
interference was nothing less than disastrous. Probably the Boer
sharpshooters would have let alone the wounded man, and afterwards their
doctors would have picked him up and properly attended to him.

James could not forget that it was in his very arms that Larcher had
been killed, and he repeated: "If I had minded my own business, he might
have been alive to this day." It occurred to him also that with his
experience he was much more useful than the callow, ignorant boy, so
that to risk his more valuable life to save the other's, from the point
of view of the general good, was foolish rather than praiseworthy. But
it appealed to his sense of irony to receive the honour which he was so
little conscious of deserving.

The Larchers had been anxious to meet James, and he was curious to know
what they were like. There was at the back of his mind also a desire to
see how they conducted themselves, whether they were still prostrate
with grief or reconciled to the inevitable. Reggie had been an only
son--just as he was. James sent no message, but arrived unexpectedly,
and found that they lived some way from the station, in a new, red-brick
villa. As he walked to the front door, he saw people playing tennis at
the side of the house.

He asked if Mrs. Larcher was at home, and, being shown into the
drawing-room the lady came to him from the tennis-lawn. He explained who
he was.

"Of course, I know quite well," she said. "I saw your portrait in the
illustrated papers."

Sh