“It’s a Poem—­what,” laughed Doe.

“You may laugh, but that’s just what it is.  He said that his heart beat at one with the heart of a junior subaltern; and it does that because it’s the heart of a boy.  And the heart of a boy is matter for a poem.”

“By Jove,” said Doe, “you seem to be in love with all the world.”

“So I am,” Monty conceded, pleased with Doe’s poetic phrase; “and with the young world in particular.”

“I think I could be that too,” began Doe—­

Doe was carrying on the conversation with ease.  I left it to him, for these words were winning eternity in my memory:  “I could forgive them everything.”  With a sense of loneliness, and that I had lost my anchor in those last days of the old world, I felt that one day I would unburden myself to Monty.  I would like an anchor again, I thought.  The same idea must have been possessing Doe, for he was saying: 

“Somehow I could forgive everything to those fellows you’ve been telling us about, but I’m blowed if I can forgive myself everything.”

And here Monty, with the utmost naturalness, as though so deep a question flowed necessarily from what had gone before, asked: 

“Have you everything to be forgiven?”

It is wonderful the questions that will be asked and the answers that will be given under the stars.

Doe looked out over the water, and moved his right foot to and fro.  Then he drew his knee up and clasped it with both hands.

“Everything,” he said, rather softly.

And, when I heard him say that, I felt I was letting him take blame that I ought to share with him.  So I added simply: 

“It’s the same with both of us.”

Monty held his peace, but his eyes glistened in the starlight.  I think he was happy that we two boys had been drawn to him, as inevitably as needles to a magnet.  At last he said: 

“I suppose we ought to turn in now.  But promise me you’ll continue this talk to-morrow, if it’s another lovely night like this.”

“Surely,” assented Doe, as we arose and folded up the chairs.

“I hope when we wake we shan’t be out at sea,” suggested I, “for I want to watch old England receding into the distance.”

Monty looked at me and smiled.

“Rupert,” he said, and it was like him to use my Christian name without as much as a “by your leave” within the first dozen hours of our acquaintance, “you’re one of them.”

“One of whom?”

“One of those to whom I could forgive everything.  You both are.  Good night, Rupert.  Good night, Edgar.”

CHAPTER III

“C.  OF E., NOW AND ALWAYS”

Sec.1