Not for the first time in these last months there was strong upon the Colonel the sense that here before him was an honest man struggling in the toils prepared for him by Nature--the Lion with no mouse to gnaw him free. Yet he was aware more strongly than ever before of that deep barrier of class which in this fundamental matter of sex makes itself more acutely felt than in any other. A man of quite unusual breadth of view, imagination, and sympathy, this was the one topic that some inner spirit of delicacy had always forbidden him to discuss except with his own kind. He was torn in two; and grateful to the kindly darkness that covered him. On the one hand were all the inhibitions imposed upon him by both natural delicacy and artificial yet real class-restraint; on the other there was his desire to help a man he genuinely liked. Should he take the line of least resistance, the line of the snob and the coward? Was it really the fact that because this man was not a gentleman he could not lay bare before him an experience that might save him? "Yes," he said at last with the emphasis of the man who is forcing himself. There was a lengthy silence. "Were you married?" "No," abruptly. "Of course not." "Was she?" "Yes." "What happened?" "She wired me to come--in India--years ago." "Did you go?" "No--thank God." The honest man in him added: "I never got the wire." Again there was a pause. "Are you glad?" "Yes." "Had she children." "No." The engineer breathed deep. "Ah," he said. "I'd ha gone." "Then you'd have done wrong." "Happen so," stubbornly. "I'd ha gone though--knowing what I know now." "What's that?" "What loov is." The Colonel paused. "She'd never have forgiven you," he said at last. "What for?" "For taking advantage of her hot fit." The arrow shot in the dark had clearly gone home. The Colonel followed up his advantage. "Is she in love with you?" "She's never said so." "But you think so?" "Nay, A don't think so," the other answered with all the old violence. "A know it. A've nobbut to reach out ma hand to pluck the flower." His egotism annoyed the Colonel. "Seems to me," he said, "we shall all of us soon have something better to do than running round after each other's wives. Seen the evening paper?" "Nay, nor the morning for that matter." "And you a politician!" "A'm two men--same as most: politician and lover. Now one's a-top; now t'other. It's a see-saw." "And the lover's on top now?" said the Colonel. "Yes," said the engineer, "and like to stay there too--blast him!" And he was gone in the darkness. CHAPTER XXVIII OLD TOWN Next day was Sunday. The Colonel waited on the cliff for his paper, which brought the expected news. The die was cast. Germany had proclaimed martial law: she was already at war with Russia; France had mobilised. "She's in it by now," he said to himself, as he walked across the golf-links towards Old Town.