Bernard did not care a straw either for the paternal handicap or for the glories of the Wharton connection.  He took his love-affair as simply as his cricket and with the same bold confidence.  Laura was what he wanted; she would fit into her surroundings at Wanhope as delicately as an old picture fits into an old frame, and one could leave her about—­so he put it to himself—­without fear of her getting damaged.  When Tom Morrison, shrewd business man, dropped a hint about the rashness of marrying the daughter of a scamp like Ferdinand Selincourt, Bernard merely stared at him and let the indiscretion go in silence.  He can scarcely be said to have loved his bride, for up to the time of the wedding his nature was not much more developed than that of a prize bull, but he considered her a very pretty woman, and his faith in her was a religion.

So they were married, and went to Eastbourne for their honeymoon:  an average match, not marked by passion on either side, but destined apparently to an average amount of comfort and good will.  They had ten gay days before Laura was left on a victoria platform, gallantly smiling with pale lips and waving her handkerchief after the train that carried Bernard back to the front.

Five months later on the eve of the Armistice he was flung out of the service, a broken man, paralysed below the waist, cursing every one who came near him and chiefly the surgeons for not letting him die.  No one ever desired life more passionately than Bernard desired death.  For some time he clung to the hope that his mind would wear his body out.  But his body was too young, too strong, too tenacious of earth to be betrayed by the renegade mind.

There came a day when Clowes felt his youth welling up in him like sap in a fallen tree:  new energy throbbed in his veins, his heart beat strong and even, it was hard to believe that he could not get off his bed if he liked and go down to the playing fields or throw his leg over a horse.  This mood fastened on him without warning in a Surbiton hospital after a calm night without a sleeping draught, when through his open window he could see green branches waving in sunlight, and hear the cries of men playing cricket and the smack of the driven ball:  and it was torture.  Tears forced their way suddenly into Bernard’s eyes.  His nurse, who had watched not a few reluctant recoveries, went out of the room.  Then his great chest heaved, and he sobbed aloud, lying on his back with face unhidden, his wide black eyes blinking at the sweet pale June sky.  No chance of death for him:  he was good for ten, twenty, fifty years more:  he could not bear it, but it had to be borne.  He tried to pull himself up:  if he could only have reached the window!  But the arms that felt so strong were as weak as an infant’s, while the dead weight of his helpless legs dragged on him like lead.  The only result of his struggle was a dreadful access of pain.  Reaction followed, for he had learnt in his A B C days not to whimper when he was hurt, and by the time the nurse returned Clowes had scourged himself back to his usual savage tranquillity.  “Can I have that window shut, please?” he asked, cynically frank.  “I used to play cricket myself.”