Oh,
Marko, so splendid, so utterly splendid as he is, and then to be like
this. Look, he says he's just got leave and he's going to spend it in
Paris! One of his women is there. That Mrs. Winfred. He's taken up with
her again. He says, 'Poor thing. She's all alone in Paris. I know how
sorry you will feel for her, and I feel I ought to go and look after
her. I know you will agree with me. I'll tell her you sent me. That will
amuse and please her so.'"

She touched her eyes with her handkerchief. "It rather hurts, Marko.
It's not that I mind his going. It's just what he would do. But it's the
way he tells me. He just says it like that deliberately to be cruel
because he knows it will hurt. So utterly splendid, Marko, and so
utterly graceless." She gave her little note of sadness again. "Utterly
splendid! Look, this is all he says about his V.C. Isn't this fine and
isn't it like him? He says, 'P.S. Yes, that V.C. business. You know why
I got it, don't you? It stands for Very Cautious, you know.'"

They laughed together. Yes, like him! Tybar exactly! Sabre could see him
writing the letter. Delighting in saying words that would hurt;
delighting in his own whimsicality that would amuse. Splendid; airy,
untouched by fear; untouched by thought; fearless, faithless, heedless,
graceless. Fortune's darling; invested in her robe of mockery.

Nona's laughter ended in a little catch at her breath. He touched her
arm. "Let's walk, Nona."

IV

He thought she was looking thin and done up. Her face had rather a drawn
look, its soft roundness gone. He thought she never had looked so
beautiful to him. She spoke to him of what she had tried to say in her
letters of his disappointments in offering himself for service. Never
had her sweet voice sounded so exquisitely tender to him. They spoke of
the war. Never, but in their letters, had he been able thus to give his
feelings and receive them, touched with the same perceptions, kindled
and enlarged, back into his sympathies again. With others the war was
all discussion of chances and circumstances, of this that had happened
and that that might happen, of this that should be done and that that
ought not to have been done. Laboratory examination of means and
remedies. The epidemic everything and the patient upstairs nothing. The
wood not seen for the trees. With Nona he talked of how he felt of
England:

_Dear earth, I do salute thee with my hand_.

He told her that.

She nodded. "I