No, death will not come to him--not in this war. I was afraid at first--I buried my face in my pillow and sobbed when at eight o'clock one morning the telegram came from Folkestone announcing that he was just going to cross the Channel--but now I have got confidence in fate. He was once taken by one of our friends to an astrologer who told him that he would probably become a soldier, and that if he did he would die a violent death by bullet or bomb, but not before he was fifty-eight. So he cannot die now, at only just twenty. He will get wounded; it is certainly time he got wounded, for he has been in the trenches nine months now and people are beginning to look surprised when I tell them he has not got a scratch yet. They will soon begin to think he hides all day in his dugout. Yes, he is certain to get wounded soon. But he will not get killed. Besides--how could there be any idea of death in connection with a creature of such vitality? I feel my pulses quickening as I look at the photograph. He has not got perfectly regular features--that is to say, he does not look at all like a hairdresser's dummy--but, oh! how handsome he is and how full of charm! One can see even in this half-length portrait that he is not vastly tall. But the fascination that I have called the "dignity of the watch chain" is there. It is such a rare thing for a mere boy to have this fascination! But he has it. It is a perfect sorcery in him. Curiously, it is hardly ever found either with extreme shortness or extreme tallness, but mostly in people on the tall side of middle height. What beautiful furry lashes he has! And his hair flung back in the Magdalen sweep! Perhaps furriness is the one characteristic that strikes one most as one looks at him. I had a long roll of skunk once with a gilt tassel at the end of it, and his small brother, playing with it, said: "This is Yeogh Wough's tail. This is just the sort of tail he'd have if he had one at all." "But what about the gilt tassel?" I had asked. "Oh, he'd have that, too! If Yeogh Wough had a tail he'd be sure to get a gilt tassel for the end of it." That was just like him. He always loves everything that is the best of its kind and the most effective. This is one of his weaknesses. But with what an air he wears his simple everyday khaki! I can quite see why they called him "Monseigneur" at his public school. His photograph draws me. I stoop my face and kiss it. My Yeogh Wough! But is he wholly mine? Is there not somebody else who wants him even though he is still hardly more than a boy? And now there floats before my eyes the vision of a girl; a small, delicate-faced creature with amethystine eyes, who is dreaming dreams that have got him for their centre. What a forcing power for sex this war has been, and is! And now suddenly, as I think of the girl, the cinematograph of the mind flashes a crowd of vivid pictures across the screen of my memory. CHAPTER II THE EXTRAVAGANT BABY