'Do you really mean that, Luscombe?'

'Of course I do. I, like you, am at a loose end, and I shall be only too
glad to have a pal until I am sent back to the front again. Now not
another word, Edgecumbe. I am not a Rothschild, but I have no one
dependent on me, and I have more money than I need to spend. So pack up
your traps, and come with me.

'Have you seen Springfield since our meeting on Paddington station?' I
asked, when presently we had removed to the hotel.

'Yes,' he replied; 'directly I got to the Y.M.C.A. Hostel, I wrote him at
his club.'

'Well?' I asked.

'Oh, he was jolly friendly, and seemed anxious to take me around.'

'And have you been with him?'

'Yes,' he replied.

'With what results?'

He hesitated a few seconds before answering me, and then he said quietly,
'Oh, nothing much out of the ordinary. It--it was rather funny.'

'What was rather funny?'

'Our conversation. He hates me, Luscombe; he positively loathes me; and
he fears me, too.'

'You have discovered that, have you?'

'Yes, there is no doubt about it.'

'Did you go anywhere with him?'

'Yes, a good many places.'

'You ought not to have gone with him,' I said doubtfully.

'Perhaps not. But I was anxious to see the phases of life with which he
is familiar; I wanted to know the class of men he meets with,--to
understand their point of view.'

'And what was your impression?'

'I am not going to tell you yet. During the four days I have been in
London I have been looking around, trying to understand the working
motives, the guiding principles, of this, the capital of the Empire. I
seem like a man in a strange country, and I am learning my way round.
Oh, I do hope I am wrong!'

'Wrong,--how? What do you mean?'

'This war is maddening. Last night I couldn't sleep for thinking of
it,--all the horror of it got hold of me. I fancied myself out at the
front again,--I heard the awful howls and shrieks of the shells, heard
the booming of the big guns, smelt the acids of the explosives, heard the
groans of the men, saw them lying in the trenches and on the No Man's
Land, torn, mutilated, mangled. It is positively ghastly,--war is hell,
man, hell!'

'Yes,' I said, 'but we must see it through.'

'I know, I know. But how far away is the end? How long is this carnage
and welter of blood to continue?'

'Let's change the subject,' I said. 'We'll get a bit of dinner, and then
go to a place of amusement.'

'