on like this you will make for yourself an ugly reputation.”      

       “Go on like what?” demanded Lieutenant D'Hubert, stopping short, quite startled. “I! I! make for myself a reputation.... What do you imagine——”      

       “I told you I don't wish to judge of the rights and wrongs of this incident. It's not my business. Nevertheless....”      

       “What on earth has he been telling you?” interrupted Lieutenant D'Hubert in a sort of awed scare.     

       “I told, you already that at first when I picked him up in the garden he was incoherent. Afterwards he was naturally reticent. But I gather at least that he could not help himself....”      

       “He couldn't?” shouted Lieutenant D'Hubert. Then lowering his voice, “And what about me? Could I help myself?”      

       The surgeon rose. His thoughts were running upon the flute, his constant companion, with a consoling voice. In the vicinity of field ambulances, after twenty-four hours' hard work, he had been known to trouble with its sweet sounds the horrible stillness of battlefields given over to silence and the dead. The solacing hour of his daily life was approaching and in peace time he held on to the minutes as a miser to his hoard.     

       “Of course! Of course!” he said perfunctorily. “You would think so. It's amusing. However, being perfectly neutral and friendly to you both, I have consented to deliver his message. Say that I am humouring an invalid if you like. He says that this affair is by no means at an end. He intends to send you his seconds directly he has regained his strength—providing, of course, the army is not in the field at that time.”      

       “He intends—does he? Why certainly,” spluttered Lieutenant D'Hubert passionately. The secret of this exasperation was not apparent to the visitor; but this passion confirmed him in the belief which was gaining ground outside that some very serious difference had arisen between these two young men. Something serious enough to wear an air of mystery. Some fact of the utmost gravity. To settle their urgent difference those two young men had risked being broken and disgraced at the outset, almost, of their career. And he feared that the forthcoming inquiry would fail to satisfy the public curiosity. They would not take the public into their  

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