“That’s not your ball,” said the Professor. “Similar position,” said the Captain. “You know, you might _win_ this hole,” said the Professor. “Who cares?” said the Captain under his breath and putted extravagantly. “That saves me,” said the Professor, and went down from a distance of twelve yards. The Captain, full of an irrational resentment, did his best to halve the hole and failed. “You ought to put in a week at nothing but putting,” said the Professor. “It would save you at least a stroke a hole. I’ve noticed that on almost every green, if I haven’t beaten you before I pull up in the putting.” The Captain pretended not to hear and said a lot of rococo things inside himself. It was Madeleine who had got him in for this game. A beautiful healthy girl ought to get up in the mornings. Mornings and beautiful healthy girls are all the same thing really. She ought to be _dewy_—positively dewy.... There she must be lying, warm and beautiful in bed—like Catherine the Great or somebody of that sort. No. It wasn’t right. All very luxurious and so on but not _right_. She ought to have understood that he was bound to fall a prey to the Professor if she didn’t get up. Golf! Here he was, neglecting his career; hanging about on these _beastly_ links, all the sound men away there in France—it didn’t do to think of it!—and he was playing this retired tradesman’s consolation! (Beastly the Professor’s legs looked from behind. The uglier a man’s legs are the better he plays golf. It’s almost a law.) That’s what it was, a retired tradesman’s consolation. A decent British soldier has no more business to be playing golf than he has to be dressing dolls. It’s a game at once worthless and exasperating. If a man isn’t perfectly fit he cannot play golf, and when he is perfectly fit he ought to be doing a man’s work in the world. If ever anything deserved the name of vice, if ever anything was pure, unforgivable dissipation, surely golf was that thing.... And meanwhile that boy was getting more and more start. Anyone with a ha’porth of sense would have been up at five and after that brat—might have had him bagged and safe and back to lunch. _Ass_ one was at times! “You’re here, sir,” said the caddie.