Watching him and studying him with that inner eye that makes the bliss of solitude, one saw he didn't care a bit about food, and still less about wine. It wouldn't have mattered to him how bad the dinner was. He wouldn't know. He couldn't think about it. For he was something more than your bon viveur and your social animal, this man with his wide grey eyes and the flopping lock on his broad forehead. He was the dreamer of dreams as well as the journalist. And at dinner he dreamed--Oh, yes, indeed, he dreamed tremendously. It was all the same to him whether or not he ate pâté de fois gras, or fowl bouillé, or sausage. He was rapt in his discussion with the Belgian Doctor on his right. Anæsthetics and antiseptics,--that's what they are talking about so hard. And suddenly out comes a piece of paper. The journalist wants to send a telegram to England. "I'm going to try and get Doctor X. to come out here. He's a very clever chap. He can go into the thing thoroughly. It's important. It must be gone into." And there, on the white cloth, scribbled on the back of a menu, he writes out his telegram. "But then," says the journalist, reflectively, "if I sign that the censor will hold it up for three days!" The Head of the Belgian Medical Department smiles. He knows what that telegram would mean to the Belgian Army. "Let _me_ sign it," he says in a gentle voice, "let me sign it and send it. My telegrams are not censored, and your English Doctor will meet us at Calais to-morrow, and all will be well with your magnificent idea!" Just then the author on the left appears a trifle uneasy. He holds up an empty Burgundy bottle towards the light. "A dead 'un!" he announces, distinctly. But our host, in his abstraction, does not hear. The author picks up the other bottle, holds it to the light, screws up one eye at it, and places it lengthwise on the table. "That's a dead 'un too," he says. Just then, with great good luck, he manages to catch the journalist's grey eye. "That's a dead 'un too," he repeats loudly. How exciting to see whether the author, in his quite natural desire to have a little more wine, will succeed in penetrating his host's dreaminess and absorption in the anæsthetics of the Belgian Army. And then all of a sudden the journalist wakes up. "Would you like some more wine?" he inquires. "These are both dead 'uns," asserts the author courageously. "We'll have some more!" says the journalist. And more Burgundy comes! But to the eminent journalist it is non-existent. For his mind is still filled with a hundred thousand things the Belgian Army want,--the iodine they need, and the anæsthetics. And nothing else exists for him at that moment but to do what he can for the nation that has laid down its life for England. Burgundy, indeed! And yet one feels glad that the author eventually gets his extra bottle. He has done something for England too. He has given us laughter when our days were very black.