easurable distance of a clear conscience.

"No, it wasn't Verschoyle. I remember the Verschoyle case." By this
time Old Jack is feeling quite truthful. "It _was_ Palliser, and
it's not for me to blame him. He only did what you or I might have
done--any man. A bit hot-headed, perhaps. But look here, Roper...."

The General dropped his voice, and went on speaking almost in a
whisper, but earnestly, for more than a minute. Then he raised it
again.

"It was that point. If you say a word to the girl, or begin giving
her any information, and she gets the idea you can tell her more,
she'll just go straight for you and say she must be told the whole.
I can see it in her eyes. And _you can't tell her the whole_. You
know you can't!"

The Major fidgeted visibly. He knew he should go round to learn about
his old friend (it was barely a quarter of a mile) as soon as the least
diminution of the fog gave him an excuse. And he was sure to see Sally.
He exaggerated her age. "The gyairl's twenty-two," said he weakly. The
General continued:

"I'm only speaking, mind you, on the hypothesis.... I'm supposing the
case to have been what I told you just now. Otherwise, you could
work the telling of it on the usual lines--unfaithfulness, estranged
affections, desertion--all the respectable produceable phrases. But as
for making that little Miss Nightingale _understand_--that is, without
making her life unbearable to her--it can't be done, Major. It can't
be done, old chap!"

"I see your game. I'll tell her to ask her mother."

"It can't be done that way. I hope the child's safe in the fog." The
General embarked on a long pause. There was plenty of time--more time
than he had (so his thought ran) when his rear-guard was cut off by the
Afridis in the Khyber Pass. But then the problem was not so difficult
as telling this live girl how she came to be one--telling her, that is,
without poisoning her life and shrouding her heart in a fog as dense
as the one that was going to make the street-lamps outside futile
when night should come to help it--telling her without dashing the
irresistible glee of those eyebrows and quenching the smile that
opened the casket of pearls that all who knew her thought of her by.

Both old soldiers sat on to think it out. The older one first
recognised the insolubility of the problem. "It can't be done," said
he. "Girls are not alike. She's too much like my nasturtium
granddaughter now...."

"I shall have to