“All right, my friend; I can stand it as long as you can. . . .  And kindly feel in my overcoat for a cigar wrapped in paper.  I’ll go forward and smoke for a while.”

“Sir?”

“The cigar—­I put it in my overcoat pocket wrapped in a bit of paper. . . .  You—­you don’t mean to tell me that it’s not there!”

Burgess searched the pockets with a perfectly grave face.

“It ain’t here; no, sir.”

Philip flung himself into the corner of his seat, making no effort to control his laughter: 

“Burgess,” he managed to say, “the dear old days are returning already.  I’ll stay here and read; you go forward and smoke that cigar.  Do you hear?”

“Yes, sir.”

Again, just as he had done every day since leaving camp, he reread Ailsa’s letter, settling down in his corner by the dirty, rattling window-pane: 

“Everybody writes to you except myself.  I know they have told you that it is taking a little longer for me to get well than anybody expected.  I was terribly tired.  Your father has been so sweet; everybody has been good to me—­Celia, poor little Camilla, and Stephen.  I know that they all write to you; and somehow I have been listlessly contented to let them tell you about home matters, and wait until my strength returned.  But you must not doubt where every waking memory of mine has centred; my thoughts have circled always around that central vortex from which, since I first laid eyes on you, they have never strayed.

“Home news is what all good soldiers want; I write for you all I know: 

“The city is the same hot, noisy, dirty, dusty, muddy, gridiron, changed in nowise except that everywhere one sees invalid soldiers; and there are far too many officers lounging about, presumably on furlough—­too many Captain Dash’s, twirling black moustaches in front of fashionable hotels.  There are no powder stains on their uniforms, no sun-burn on their cheeks.  They throng the city; and it is a sinister phenomenon.

“I think Broadway was never as lively, never quite as licentious.  Those vivid cafes, saloons, concert halls, have sprung up everywhere; theatres, museums, gardens are in full blast; shops are crowded, hotels, street cars, stages overflowing with careless, noisy, overdressed people.  The city is en fete; and somehow when I think of that Dance of Death thundering ceaselessly just south of us, it appalls me to encounter such gaiety and irresponsibility in the streets.

“Yet, after all, it may be the safety-valve of a brave people.  Those whirling daily in the Dance of Death have, at least, the excitement to sustain them.  Here the tension is constant and terrible; and the human mind cannot endure too much tragedy.

“. . .  They say our President fits a witticism to the tragedy of every battle-field; but it may be to preserve his own reason through these infernal years.  He has the saddest eyes of any man since the last Martyr died.