No, he went on, it wasn’t likely.  It had been touch and go, he had only just pulled it off by the skin of his teeth.  It had given him more trouble than anything he’d ever tried for.  It had bothered him more.  It had bothered him most damnably.

I thought he was referring to his struggles with the recruiting depots and the War Office and the Home Office and the Embassies and all the rest of it.  And I said it was pretty hard luck his own Ambulance Corps being sent out without him.  But he said, No; it wasn’t.  He hadn’t been very keen on the Ambulance Corps.  He hadn’t really wanted to go out with all that beastly crowd.  This quick scouting game—­by himself—­was more in his line.  All he regretted was the time he’d lost.

Well, I said, anyhow he was a lucky beggar to have got what he wanted after six weeks.

At that he looked at me suddenly and his face went all sharp and thin.  Or else I hadn’t noticed till then how sharp and thin it was.  His flush had seemed to flood it and fill it out somehow, and his eyes struck your attention like two great flashes of energy.  The flash had gone out now as he looked at me.

I reminded him:  “Haven’t you always said you could get what you wanted?”

“Oh yes, I’ve said it, and I’ve done it.  That’s nothing.  Any fool can do that.  The great thing is to make yourself get what you don’t want.  I didn’t want to do this.  I had to.”

“No.  You wanted to enlist.  But I’m not sure that from your point of view this isn’t better.”

“Jolly lot you know,” he said, “about my point of view.”

“Your idea,” I explained, “of doing things on your own.  Isn’t that what you wanted?”

He answered very slowly:  “I don’t think—­it matters—­what I wanted—­or what I didn’t want.  It’s enough—­isn’t it?—­if I want to now—­if I want it more than anything else?”

I said, No, I didn’t think it did matter.

But I hadn’t a notion what he meant.  I didn’t know that he was on the edge of a confession.  I couldn’t see that he was trying to tell me something about himself, and that I had started him off by telling him he was splendid.  It was as if—­then—­he too had felt that Viola was there and listening to us, as if he were speaking to her and not to me.

For the next thing he said was, “I want you to tell Viola about it.  Tell her it’s all right.  Tell her I’m all right.  See?”

“But shan’t you,” I said, “be seeing her?  Isn’t she going to see you off or something?”

He said, “No.  Much better not.  She wouldn’t be content with seeing me off.  She’d try to come out with me.  She’d worry me to take her.  And I’m not going to take her.  She isn’t to know I’m going till I’ve gone.  And she isn’t to know where I’ve gone to.  I won’t have her coming out to me. You’ve got to see to that, Furny.  You’ve got to stop her if she tries to get out.  They’re all trying.  You should just see the bitches—­tumbling, and wriggling and scrabbling with their claws and crawling on their stomachs to get to the front—­tearing each other’s eyes out to get there first.  And there are fellows that’ll take them.  They’ll even take their wives.