Have you been in the retreat?"

"I was."

"And the angels? Have you seen them?"

He paused, and then said with solemnity:

"Was it an angel I saw?... I was lying doggo by myself in a hole,
and bullets whizzing over me all the time. It was nearly dark, and a
figure in white came and stood by the hole; he stood quite still
and the German bullets went on just the same. Suddenly I saw he was
wounded in the hand; it was bleeding. I said to him: 'You're hit in
the hand.' 'No,' he said--he had a most beautiful voice--'that is an
old wound. It has reopened lately. I have another wound in the other
hand.' And he showed me the other hand, and that was bleeding too.
Then the firing ceased, and he pointed, and although I'd eaten
nothing at all that day and was dead-beat, I got up and ran the way he
pointed, and in five minutes I ran into what remained of my unit."

The officer's sonorous tones ceased; he shut his lips tightly, as
though clinching the testimony, and the life of the bedroom was
suspended in absolute silence.

"That's what _I_ saw.... And with the lack of food my brain was
absolutely clear."

Christine, on her back, trembled.

The officer replaced his mascot. Then he said, waving the little bag:

"Of course, there are fellows who don't need mascots. Fellows that if
their name isn't written on a bullet or a piece of shrapnel it won't
reach them any more than a letter not addressed to you would reach
you. Now my Colonel, for instance--it was he who told me how good my
mascot was--well, he can stop shells, turn 'em back. Yes. He's just
got the D.S.O. And he said to me, 'Edgar,' he said, 'I don't deserve
it. I got it by inspiration.' And so he did.... What time's that?"

The gilded Swiss clock in the drawing-room was striking its tiny gong.

"Nine o'clock."

The officer looked dully at his wrist-watch which, not having been
wound on the previous night, had inconsiderately stopped.

"Then I can't catch my train at Victoria." He spoke in a changed
voice, lifeless, and sank back on the bed.

"Train? What train?"

"Nothing. Only the leave train. My leave is up to-night. To-morrow I
ought to have been back in the trenches."

"But you have told me nothing of it! If you had told me--But not one
word, my dear."

"When one is with a woman--!"

He seemed gloomily and hopelessly to reproach her.

Chapter 21

THE LEAVE-TRAIN

"What o'clock--your train?"

"Nine-thirty."

"But you can catch it. Y