"Then tell me," he said, "how the deuce you can manage to do without an overcoat in this weather?" If only he could get the chap off the topics of his mysterious rows they might drift to the matter that had brought him up there on that bitter night when he should be sitting over a good wood fire philandering with Mlle Nanette de Bailly. He sank his neck deeper into the sheepskin collar of his British warm. The other, slim, was with all his badges, ribands and mail, shining darkly in a cold that set all Tietjens' teeth chattering like porcelain. Levin became momentarily animated: "You should do as I do. . . . Regular hours . . . lots of exercise . . . horse exercise. . . . I do P.T. every morning at the open window of my room . . . hardening. . . ." "It must be very gratifying for the ladies in the rooms facing yours," Tietjens said grimly. "Is that what's the matter with Mlle Nanette, now? . . . I haven't got time for proper exercise. . . ." "Good gracious, no," the colonel said. He now tucked his hand firmly under Tietjens' arm and began to work him towards the left hand of the road: in the direction leading out of the camp. Tietjens worked their steps as firmly towards the right and they leant one against the other. "In fact, old bean," the colonel said, "Campy is working so hard to get the command of a fighting army--though he's indispensable here--that we might pack up bag and baggage any day. . . . That is what has made Nanette see reason. . . ." "Then what am I doing in this show?" Tietjens asked. But Colonel Levin continued blissfully: "In fact I've got her almost practically for certain to promise that next week . . . or the week after next at latest . . . she'll . . . damn it, she'll name the happy day." Tietjens said: "Good hunting! . . . How splendidly Victorian!" "That's, damn it," the colonel exclaimed manfully, "what I say myself. . . . Victorian is what it is. . . . All these marriage settlements. . . . And what is it . . . _Droits du Seigneur_? . . . And notaires . . . And the Count, having his say . . . And the Marchioness . . . And two old grand aunts . . . But . . . Hoopla! . . ." He executed with his gloved right thumb in the moonlight a rapid pirouette . . . "Next week . . . or at least the week after . . ." His voice suddenly dropped. "At least," he wavered, "that was what it was at lunch-time. . . . Since then . . . something happened. . . ." "You've not been caught in bed with a V.A.D.?" Tietjens asked. The colonel mumbled: "No . . . not in bed. . . . Not with a V.A.D. . . . Oh, damn it, at the railway station. . . . With . . . The general sent me down to meet her . . . and Nanny of course was seeing off her grandmother, the Duchesse . . . The giddy cut she handed me out. . . ." Tietjens became coldly furious.