All through the pleasant dinner hour Ted kept wishing he could get the captain to talking about himself and his battle experiences and had no idea at all that he himself was being shrewdly studied as they talked.  “Good breeding, good blood-quality,” the captain summed up.  “If he is a fair sample of young America then young America is a bit of all right.”  And if he is a fair sample of the Holiday family then Elinor had indeed fallen into the best of hands.  Praise be!  He wondered more than once what the young-corporal’s own story was, what was the nature of the fiasco which had driven him into the Canadian training camp and what was behind that unboyish look which came now and then into his boyish eyes.

Later during the intimate evening over their cigarettes both had their curiosity gratified.  Captain Annersley was moved to relate some of his hair breadth escapes and thrilling moments to an alert and hero worshiping listener.  And later still Ted too waxed autobiographical in response to some clever baiting of which he was entirely unaware though he did wonder afterward how he had happened to tell the thing he had kept most secret to an entire stranger.  It was an immense relief to the boy to talk it all out.  It would never haunt him again in quite the same way now he had once broken the barriers of his reserve.  Geoffrey Annersley served his purpose for Ted as well as Larry Holiday.

Annersley was immensely interested in the confession.  It matched very well he thought with that other story of a gallant young Holiday to whom his cousin Elinor owed so much in more than one way.  They were a queer lot these Holidays.  They had the courage of their convictions and tilted at windmills right valiantly it seemed.

And then he fell to talking straight talk to Ted Holiday, saying things that only a man who has lived deeply can say with any effect.  He urged the boy not to worry about that smash of his.  It was past history, over and done with.  He must look ahead not back and be thankful he had come out as well as he had.

“There is just one other thing I want to say,” he added.  “You think you have had your lesson.  Maybe it is enough but you’ll find it a jolly lot easier to slip up over there than it is at home.  You lose your sense of values when there is death and damnation going all around you, get to feeling you have a right to take anything that comes your way to even it up.  Anyway I felt that way until I met the girl I wanted to marry.  Then the rest looked almighty different.  I’ve given Nancy the best I had to give but it wasn’t good enough.  She deserved more than I could give her.  That is plain speaking, Holiday.  Men say war excuses justify anything.  It doesn’t do anything of the sort.  Some day you will be wanting to marry a girl yourself.  Don’t let anything happen in this next year over there that you will regret for a life-time.  That is a queer preachment and I’m a jolly rotten preacher.  But somehow I felt I had to say it.  You can remember it or forget it as you like.”