He told her about Arthur; talked of “B” Company; answered questions about his new life readily. Nirvana, she heard, went as well as could be expected; Jameson’s sales had been rather disappointing. It was nice of her to offer to drive him back on Sunday in the car; but he thought the journey home, in the dark and without a chauffeur, might be too much for her. Simpson too, asked by wire to be in the office on Saturday, could not see much difference in our Mr. Jameson. His grip of things did not seem to have suffered. He enquired about customers by name; about Hartopp (_geborener_ Hagenburg) in particular. He mentioned the partnership deed; suggested a tentative renewal—say for two years or the “duration”—on the old terms. The older man, warning him vaguely about taking two thousand pounds out of the business at such a time, met with a curt, “I don’t like it any more than you do, but a fellow must stand by his own.” Mention of Beckmanns evoked another flash of temper. Bramson, on the other hand, summoned peremptorily to give up the better part of his Saturday afternoon off, found Peter rather overbearing: confided the fact to his cousin Marcus with whom he dined that evening. Said Marcus, “My boy, you forget that you’re a civilian to him now.” Whereafter, the two settled down to piquet—with occasional references to the stationary condition of Nirvana trade as compared with the leaping canteen business of “Pullman Virginias.” “Pretty” Bramson was perfectly straight: but after all “a fellow must stand by his own!” § 3 In the crowded Pullman car of the last Sunday night train back to Shoreham, Peter fell in with his Colonel. The diffident, kindly man—usually shy with his subalterns—offered a whisky-and-soda; grew a little talkative. “I wish I were out in France,” he confided. “I’d rather be a Major out there than a Colonel in England any day. But the powers-that-be won’t hear of it. It looks like a long war, Jameson—a really long war. But of course it might end tomorrow—and then one would never have had one’s chance.” “Do you think we shall be going out soon, sir?” Peter asked the stock-question from pure habit. Colonel Andrews began to talk the other side of war, the difficulties of finding seasoned wood for rifle-stocks, the lack of dyes for khaki. His outlook, if limited, was—except on the question of machine-guns—extraordinarily sound: and Peter, when their homeward way separated in the rain at the cross-roads by the cycle-shop, found difficulty in realizing how so decent a chap could have let himself be misled into taking Locksley-Jones for Adjutant. . . . Turning into the Camp, Peter could see immediately that something must be wrong. Although it was nearly one o’clock in the morning, lights glowed in most of the officers’ tents. Across the blurr and rain drizzle of the parade-ground, under the acetylene flares by the latrine-buckets, figures moved, lanterns swayed. He heard voices calling.