"I have already told you that this is promotion. I have been much impressed by the way you have handled this command. You are, of course, no soldier, but you will make an admirable officer for the militia, that is all that our troops now are. . . ." He said: "I will emphasize what I am saying. . . . No officer could--without being militarily in the wrong--have a private life that is as incomprehensible and embarrassing as yours. . . ." Tietjens said: "He's hit it! . . ." The general said: "An officer's private life and his life on parade are as strategy to tactics. . . . I don't want, if I can avoid it, to go into your private affairs. It's extremely embarrassing. . . . But let me put it to you that . . . I wish to be delicate. But you are a man of the world! . . . Your wife is an extremely beautiful woman. . . . There has been a scandal . . . I admit not of your making. . . . But if, on the top of that, I appeared to show favouritism to you . . ." Tietjens said: "You need not go on, sir. . . . I understand. . . ." He tried to remember what the brooding and odious McKechnie had said . . . only two nights ago. . . . He couldn't remember. . . . It was certainly a suggestion that Sylvia was the general's mistress. It had then, he remembered, seemed fantastic. . . . Well, what else _could_ they think? He said to himself: "It absolutely blocks out my staying here!" He said aloud: "Of course, it's my own fault. If a man so handles his womenfolk that they get out of hand, he has only himself to blame." The general was going on. He pointed out that one of his predecessors had lost that very command on account of scandals about women. He had turned the place into a damned harem! . . . He burst out, looking at Tietjens with a peculiar goggle-eyed intentness: "If you think I'd care about losing my command over Sylvia or any other damned Society woman. . . ." He said: "I beg your pardon . . ." and continued reasoningly: "It's the men that have to be considered. They think--and they've every right to think it if they wish to--that a man who's a wrong 'un over women isn't the man they can trust their lives in the hands of. . . ." He added: "And they're probably right. . . . A man who's a real wrong 'un. . . . I don't mean who sets up a gal in a tea-shop. . . . But one who sells his wife, or . . . At any rate, in _our_ army. . . . The French may be different! . . . Well, a man like that usually has a yellow streak when it comes to fighting. . . . Mind, I'm not saying always. . . . Usually. . . . There was a fellow called . . ." He went off into an anecdote. . . . Tietjens recognized the pathos of his trying to get away from the agonizing present moment, back to an India where it was all real soldiering and good leather and parades that had been parades. But he did not feel called upon to follow. He could not follow. He was going up the line. . . .