All this did not transpire overnight.  It took days.  He told no one of his plans in the meantime, no one but Tommy Ashe, who was a trifle disappointed when Thompson declined to handle Tommy’s exceedingly profitable motor business.  Tommy seemed hurt.  To make it clear that he had a vital reason, Thompson explained tersely.

“I can’t do it because I’m going to the front.”

“Eh?  What the devil!”

Tommy looked all the astonishment his tone expressed.

“Well, what the devil?” Thompson returned tartly.  “Is there anything strange about that?  A good many men have gone.  A good many more will have to go before this thing is settled.  Why not?”

“Oh, if a man feels that he should,” Tommy began.  He seemed at a loss for words, and ended lamely:  “There’s plenty of cannon-fodder in the country without men of your caliber wasting themselves in the trenches.  You haven’t the military training nor the pull to get a commission.”

Thompson’s lips opened to retort with a sentence he knew would sting like a whiplash.  But he thought better of it.  He would not try plucking the mote out of another man’s eye, when he had so recently got clear of the beam in his own.

Tommy did not tarry long after that.  He wished Thompson good luck, but he left behind him the impression that he privately considered it a poor move.  Thompson was willing to concede that from a purely material standpoint it was a poor move.  But he could no longer adopt the purely materialistic view.  It had suddenly become clear to him that he must go—­and why he must go.  Just as the citizen whose house gets on fire knows beyond peradventure that he must quench the flames if it lies in his power.

The Royal Flying Corps arrives at its ends slowly.  Perhaps not too slowly for the niceness of choice that must be made.  Presently there came to Wesley Thompson a brief order to report at a training camp in Eastern Canada.

When he held this paper in his hand and knew himself committed irrevocably to the greatest game of all, he felt a queer, inner glow, a quiet satisfaction such as must come to a man who succeeds in some high enterprise.  Thompson felt this in spite of desperate facts.  He had no illusions as to what he had set about.  He knew very well that in the R.F.C. it was a short life and not always a merry one.  Of course a man might be lucky.  He might survive by superior skill.  In any case it had to be done.

But he was moved likewise by a strange loneliness, and with his orders in his hand he understood at last the source of that peculiar regret which latterly had assailed him in stray moments.  There were a few friends to bid good-by.  And chief, if she came last on his round of calls that last day, was Sophie Carr.

He found Sophie at home about four in the afternoon, sitting in the big living room, making Red Cross bandages.  She did not stop her work when he was ushered in.  Beside her on a table stood a flat box and in this from time to time she put a finished roll.  It occurred to Thompson that sometime one of those white bandages fabricated by her hands might be used on him.