whirling giddiness in which he was conscious of some enormous violence
going on but could not feel it--like (as he afterwards thought)
beginning to come to in the middle of a tooth extraction under gas--on
the top of these and of extraordinary things and scenes and people he
could not at all understand came some one saying:

"Well, it's good-by to the war for you, old man."

He knew that he was aware--and somehow for some time had been
aware--that he was in a cot in a ship. He said, "I got knocked out,
didn't I?"

... Some one was telling him some interminable story about some one being
wounded in the shoulder and in the knee. He said, and his voice appeared
to him to be all jumbled up and thick, "Well, I don't care a damn."

... Some one laughed.

Years--or minutes--after this he was talking to a nurse. He said, "What
did some one say to me about it being good-by to the war for me?"

The nurse smiled. "Well, poor thing, you've got it rather badly in the
knee, you know."

He puzzled over this. Presently he said, "Where are we?"

The nurse bent across the cot and peered through the port; then beamed
down on him:

"England!"

She said, "Aren't you glad? _What's_ the matter?"

His face was contracted in intensity of thought, extraordinary thought:
he felt the most extraordinary premonition of something disastrous
awaiting him: there was in his mind, meaninglessly, menacingly, over and
over again, "Good luck have thee with thine honour ... and thy right
hand shall show thee terrible things...."

"Terrible things!"

PART FOUR

MABEL--EFFIE--NONA

CHAPTER I

I

Said Hapgood--that garrulous Hapgood, solicitor, who first in this book
spoke of Sabre to a mutual friend--said Hapgood, seated in the
comfortable study of his fiat, to that same friend, staying the night:

"Well, now, old man, about Sabre. Well, I tell you it's a funny
business--a dashed funny business, the position old Puzzlehead Sabre has
got himself into. Of course you, with your coarse and sordid instincts,
will say it's just what it appears to be and a very old story at that.
Whereas to me, with my exquisitely delicate susceptibilities.... No,
don't throw that, old man. Sorry. I'll be serious. What I want just to
kick off with is that you know as well as I do that I've never been the
sort of chap who wept he knows not why; I've never nursed a tame gazelle
or any of that sort of stuff. In fact I've got about as much sentiment
i