“There is only one explanation,” said I angrily.  “What are your intentions regarding the girl?”

He smiled.  “Quite honourable.”

“You mean marriage?”

“Oh, no,” said he, emphatically.

“Then the other thing?  That’s not honourable.”

“Of course not.  Certainly not the other thing.  I’m not a blackguard.”

“Then what on earth are you playing at?”

He sighed.  “I’m afraid you will never understand.”

“I’m afraid I won’t,” said I.  “By your own confession you are neither a lusty blackguard nor an honourable gentleman.  You’re a sort of philanderer, somewhere in between.  You neither mean to fight like a man nor love like a man.  I’m sorry to say it, but I’ve no use for you.  As I can’t do it myself, will you kindly ring the bell?”

“Certainly,” said he, white with anger, which I was glad to see, and pressed the electric button beside the mantelpiece.  He turned on me, his head high.  There was still some breeding left in him.

“I’m sorry we’re at such cross-purposes, Major.  All my life long I’ve owed you kindnesses I can’t ever repay.  But at present we’re hopelessly out of sympathy!”

“It seems so,” said I.  “I had hoped your father’s son would be a better man!”

“My father,” said he, “was a successful stockbroker, without any ideas in his head save the making of money.  I don’t see what he has got to do with my well-considered attitude towards life.”

“Your callow attitude towards life, my poor boy,” said I, “is a matter of profound indifference to me.  But I shall give orders that you are no longer admitted to this house except in uniform.”

“That’s absurd,” said he.

“Not at all,” said I.

In obedience to the summons of the bell Sergeant Marigold appeared and stood in his ramrod fashion by the door.

Randall came forward to my wheel-chair, with hand outstretched.

“I’m desperately sorry, Major, for this disastrous misunderstanding.”

I thrust my hands beneath the light shawl that covered my legs.

“Don’t be such a self-sufficient fool, Randall,” I said, “as to think I don’t understand.  In the present position there are no subtleties and no complications.  Good-night.”

Marigold, with a wooden face, opened wide the door, and Randall, with a shrug of the shoulders, went out.

I stayed awake the whole of that livelong night.

When I learned the death of young Oswald Fenimore, whom I loved far more dearly than Randall Holmes, I went to bed and slept peacefully.  A gallant lad died in battle; there is nothing more to be said, nothing more to be thought.  The finality, heroically sublime, overwhelms the poor workings of the brain.  But in the case of a fellow like Randall Holmes—­well, as I have said, I did not get a wink of sleep the whole night long.

Someone, a few months ago, told me of a young university man—­ Oxford or Cambridge, I forget—­who, when asked why he was not fighting, replied; “What has the war to do with me?  I disapprove of this brawling.”