offence for which the Matron nearly threw her, there and then, into the street.  It was that of the gallant Colonel of a New Zealand Regiment at Gallipoli.  Betty had to point to the brief biographical note to prove to the distracted woman that the late Colonel Tufton of New Zealand could not be identical with Sergeant Tufton of the Grenadiers.  She regarded Mrs. Tufton as a brand she had plucked from the burning and took a great deal of trouble with her.  On the other hand, I imagine Mrs. Tufton looked upon herself as a very important person, a sergeant’s wife, and the confidential intimate of a leading sister at the Wellingsford Hospital.  In fact, Marigold mentioned her notorious vanity.

“What does it matter,” cried Betty, when I put this view before her, “how swelled her head may be, so long as it isn’t swollen with drink?”

And I could find no adequate reply.

Towards the end of the month comes Boyce to Wellingsford, this time not secretly; for the day after his arrival he drove his mother through the town and incidentally called on me.  A neglected bullet graze on the neck had turned septic.  An ugly temperature had sent him to hospital.  The authorities, as soon as the fever had abated and left him on the high road to recovery, had sent him home.  A khaki bandage around his bull-throat alone betokened anything amiss.  He would be back, he said, as soon as the Medical Board at the War Office would let him.

On this occasion, for the first time since South African days, I met him without any mistrust.  What had passed between Betty and himself, I did not know.  Relations between man and woman are so subtle and complicated, that unless you have the full pleadings on both sides in front of you, you cannot arbitrate; and, as often as not, if you deliver the most soul-satisfying of judgments, you are hopelessly wrong, because there are all important, elusive factors of personality, temperament, sex, and what not which all the legal acumen in the world could not set down in black and white.  So half unconsciously I ruled out Betty from my contemplation of the man.  I had been obsessed by the Vilboek Farm story, and by that alone.  Reggie Dacre—­to say nothing of personages in high command—­had proved it to be a horrible lie.  He had Marshal Ney’s deserved reputation—­le brave des braves—­and there is no more coldly critical conferrer of such repute than the British Army in the field.  To win it a man not only has to do something heroic once or twice—­that is what he is there for—­but he has to be doing it all the time.  Boyce had piled up for himself an amazing record, one that overwhelmed the possibility of truth in old slanders.  When I gripped him by the hand, I felt immeasurable relief at being able to do so without the old haunting suspicion and reservation.

He spoke, like thousands of others of his type—­the type of the fine professional English soldier—­with diffident modesty of such personal experiences as he deigned to recount.  The anecdotes mostly had a humorous side, and were evoked by allusion.  Like all of us stay-at-homes, I cursed the censorship for leaving us so much in the dark.  He laughed and cursed the censorship for the opposite reason.