“Yes, be reasonable.  Everyone has his place in this World conflict.  We can’t all be practical fighters.  You wouldn’t set Kitchener or Grey or Lord Crewe to bayonet Germans—­”

“By God, sir,” I cried, smiting one palm with the fist of the other hand.  “By God, sir, I would, if they were three and twenty.”  I had completely lost my temper.  “And if I saw them doing nothing, while the country was asking for men, but writing rotten doggerel and messing about with girls far beneath them in station, I should call them the damnedest skunks unskinned!”

He had the decency to rise.  “Major Meredyth,” said he, “you’re under a terrible misapprehension.  You’re a military man and must look at everything from a military point of view.  It would be useless to discuss the philosophy of the situation with you.  We’re on different planes.”

Just what I said.

“You,” said I, “seem to be hovering near Tophet and the Abyss.”

“No, no,” he answered with an indulgent smile.  “You are quoting Carlyle.  You must give him up.”

“Damned pro-German, I should think I do,” I cried.  I had forgotten where my phrase came from.

“I’m glad to hear it.  He’s a back-number.  I’m a modern.  I represent equilibrium—­” He made a little rocking gesture with his graceful hand.  “I am out for Eternal Truth, which I think I perceive.”

“In poor little Phyllis Gedge, I suppose?”

“Why not?  Look.  I am the son, grandson, great-grandson, of English Tories.  She is the daughter of socialism, syndicalism, pacifism, internationalism—­everything that is most apart from my traditions.  But she brings to me beauty, innocence, the feminine solution of all intellectual concepts.  She, the woman, is the soul of conflicting England.  She is torn both ways.  But as she has to breed men, some day, she is instinctively on our side.  She is invaluable to me.  She inspires my poems.  You may not believe it, but she is at the back of my political articles.  You must really be a little more broad-minded, Major, and look at these things from the right point of view.  From the point of view of my work, she is merely a symbol.”

“And you?” said I, wrathfully.  “What are you to her?  Do you suppose she takes you for a symbol?  I wish to Heaven she did.  A round cipher of naught, the symbol of inanity.  She takes you for an honourable gentleman.  I’ve known the child since she was born.  As good a little girl as you could wish to meet.”

He drew himself up.  “That’s the opinion of her I am endeavouring to express.”

“Quite so.  You win a good decent girl’s affection,—­if you hadn’t, she would never have let you walk about with her at nightfall, with your arm round her waist,—­and you have the cynical audacity to say that she’s only a symbol.”

“When you asked me to come in this evening,” said he, “I naturally concluded you would broach this subject.  I came prepared to give you a complete explanation of what I am ready to admit was a compromising situation.”