"There were a great many poems with that refrain in the Middle Ages. . . . You are probably thinking of an albade by Arnaut Daniel, which someone translated lately. . . . An albade was a song to be sung at dawn when, presumably, no one but lovers would be likely to sing. . . ." "Will there," Sylvia asked, "be anyone but you singing up in your camp to-morrow at four?" She could not help it. . . . She knew that Tietjens had adopted his slow pomposity in order to give the grotesque object at the table with them time to recover from his confusion. She hated him for it. What right had he to make himself appear a pompous ass in order to shield the confusion of anybody? The second-lieutenant came out of his confusion to exclaim, actually slapping his thigh: "There you are, madam. . . . Trust the captain to know everything! . . . I don't believe there's a question under the sun you could ask him that he couldn't answer. . . . They say up at the camp . . ." He went on with long stories of all the questions Tietjens _had_ answered up at the camp. . . . Emotion was going all over Sylvia . . . at the proximity of Tietjens. She said to herself: "Is this to go on for ever?" Her hands were ice-cold. She touched the back of her left hand with the fingers of her right. It _was_ ice-cold. She looked at her hands. They were bloodless. . . . She said to herself: "It's pure sexual passion . . . it's pure sexual passion . . . God! Can't I get over this?" She said: "Father! . . . You used to be fond of Christopher. . . . _Get_ our Lady to get me over this. . . . It's the ruin of him and the ruin of me. But, oh _damn_, don't! . . . For it's all I have to live for. . . ." She said: "When he came mooning back from the telephone I thought it was all right. . . . I thought what a heavy wooden-horse he looked. . . . For two minutes. . . . Then it's all over me again. . . . I want to swallow my saliva and I can't. My throat won't work. . . ." She leaned one of her white bare arms on the tablecloth towards the walrus-moustache that was still snuffling gloriously: "They used to call him Old Sol at school," she said. "But there's one question of Solomon's he could not answer. . . . The one about the way of a man with . . . Oh, a maid! . . . Ask him what happened before the dawn ninety-six--no, ninety-eight days ago. . . ." She said to herself: "I can't help it. . . . Oh, I _can't_ help it. . . ." The ex-sergeant-major was exclaiming happily: "Oh, no one ever said the captain was one of these thought-readers. . . . It's real solid knowledge of men and things he has. . . . Wonderful how he knows the men considering he was not born in the service. . . . But there, your born gentleman mixes with men all his days and knows them. Down to the ground and inside their puttees. . . ." Tietjens was looking straight in front of him, his face perfectly expressionless. "But I bet I got him, . . ." she said to herself and then to the sergeant-major: