"That's right. Stroke your beard as if nothing mattered but your pleasure. You'll be happy enough when Mark's gone." Emilius left off stroking his beard. "You say I turned him out of the office," he said. "Did he stay with Edward?" "Nobody could stay with Edward. You couldn't yourself." "Ask Victor how long he thinks he'll keep him." "What do you mean, Emilius?" He didn't answer. He stood there, his lips pouting between his moustache and beard, his eyes smiling wickedly, as if he had just found out he could torment her more by not saying what he meant. "If Dan went to the bad," she said, "I wouldn't blame him. It would serve you right. "Unless," she added, "that's what you want." And she began to cry. She cried as a child cries, with spasms of sobbing, her pretty mouth spoiled, stretched wide, working, like india-rubber; dull red blotches creeping up to the brown stains about her eyes. Her tears splashed on to the fine, black silk web of the sock and sparkled there. Emilius had gone from the room, leaving the door open. Mary got up and shut it. She stood, hesitating. The helpless sobbing drew her, frightened her, stirred her to exasperation that was helpless too. Her mother had never been more intolerably dear. She went to her. She put her arm round her. "Don't, Mamma darling. Why do you let him torture you? He didn't turn Dan out of the office. He let him go because he can't afford to pay him enough." "I know that as well as you," her mother said surprisingly. She drew herself from the protecting arm. "Well, then--But, oh, what a brute he is. _What_ a brute!" "For shame to talk that way of your father. _You've_ no right. You're the one that always goes scot-free." And, beginning to cry again, she rose and went out, grasping Mark's sock in her convulsive hand. "Mary, did you hear your mother say I bullied you?" Her father had come back into the room. "Yes," she said. "Have I ever bullied you?" She looked at him steadily. "No. You would have done if Mamma had loved me as much as she loves Mark. I wish you had. I wish you'd bullied the life out of me. I shouldn't have cared. I wish you'd hated me. Then I should have known she loved me." He looked at her in silence, with round, startled eyes. He understood. II. "Ubique--" The gunner's motto. Mark's motto, stamped on all the letters he would write. A blue gun on a blue gun-carriage, the muzzle pointing to the left. The motto waving underneath: "UBIQUE." At soldiers' funerals the coffin was carried on a gun-carriage and covered with a flag. "_Ubique quo fas et gloria ducunt_." All through the excitement of the evening it went on sounding in her head. It was Mark's coming of age party in the week before he went. The first time she could remember being important at a party. Her consciousness of being important was intense, exquisite. She was Sub-Lieutenant Mark Olivier's sister. His only one. And, besides, she looked nice.