n aptitude that flourished best under an appreciative eye--of the
dowager countess looking down from heaven--or of the discerning here on
earth--as an actor is encouraged by a sympathetic public to his highest
histrionic efforts. If there was anything histrionic in Ashley himself,
it was only in the sense that he was at his finest when, actually or
potentially, there was some one there to see. He had powers then of
doing precisely the right thing which in solitude might have been
dormant from lack of motive.

It was undoubtedly because he felt the long-sighted eyes of England on
him that he had done precisely the right thing in winning the Victoria
Cross. He confessed this--to himself. He confessed it often--every time,
in fact, when he came to a difficult passage in his life. It was his
strength, his inspiration. He confessed it now. If he sat silent while
Olivia Guion waited till it seemed good to him to speak, it was only
that he might remind himself of the advantages of doing the right thing,
however hard. He had tested those advantages time and time again. The
very memories they raised were a rebuke to weakness and hesitation. If
he ever had duties he was inclined to shirk, he thought of that
half-hour which had forever set the seal upon his reputation as a
British soldier.

He thought of it now. He saw himself again looking up at the bristling
cliffs that were to be rushed, whence the Afridis were pouring their
deadly fire. He saw himself measuring with his eye the saddle of
precipitous slope that had to be crossed, devoid of cover and strewn
with the bodies of dead Ghurkas. Of the actual crossing, with sixty
Rangers behind him, he had little or no recollection. He had passed
under the hail of bullets as through perils in a dream. As in a dream,
too, he remembered seeing his men, when he turned to cheer them on, go
down like nine-pins--throwing up their arms and staggering, or twisting
themselves up like convulsive cats. It was grotesque rather than
horrible; he felt himself grinning inwardly, as at something hellishly
comic, when he reached the group of Ghurkas huddled under the cavernous
shelter of the cliff. Then, just as he threw himself on the ground,
panting like a spent dog and feeling his body all over to know whether
or not he had been wounded, he saw poor Private Vickerson out in the
open, thirty yards from the protection of the wall of rock. While the
other Rangers to a man were lying still, on the bac