His expression was not lost on Archie, who saw that the boat he had steered so carefully into the shallows was drawing out to deep water again, and that he had used his luxuriant imagination to small purpose. He had so little self-consciousness that to keep James's interest upon himself was no temptation to him, though it might have been to some men. He cast about for something wherewith to blot his own figure from the picture. "And you," he said, gravely, "you who think so much of my discomforts, and who have actually wielded the sword while I have merely threatened to wield the warming-pan--you must have seen stranger things than the kitchen." "I?" said James, looking fixedly out to where the town steeple threw its reflection on the wet sand--"yes. I have seen things that I hope you will never see. It is not for me to speak ill of war, I who have turned to it for consolation as a man may turn to his religion. But war is not waged against men alone in some countries. I have seen it when it is waged against women and little children, when it is slaughter, not war. I have seen mothers--young, beautiful women--fighting like wild beasts for the poor babes that cowered behind their skirts, and I have seen their bodies afterwards. It would be best to forget--but who can forget?" Archie sat still, with eyes from which all levity had vanished. He had known vaguely that James had fought under Marshal Lacy in the War of the Polish Succession, in the bloody campaign against the Turks, and again in Finland. The ironic futility of things in general struck him, for it was absurd to think that this man, seared by war and wise in the realities of events whose rumours shook Europe, one who had looked upon death daily in company with men like Peter Lacy, should come home to be hunted down back streets by a travelling painter. He contemplated his companion with renewed interest; no wonder he was ruthless in small things. He was decidedly the most fascinating person he had known. "And you went to these things _for consolation_--so you said?" "For consolation. For a thing that does not exist," said the other slowly. He paused and turned to his companion with an expression that horrified the young man and paralyzed his curiosity. The power in his face seemed to have given way, revealing, for a moment, a defencelessness like the defencelessness of a child looking upon the dark; and it told Archie that there was something that even Logie dreaded and that that something was memory.