“Oh, it’s a fortnight. We ought to get mail at Madirabad.... I must write. My God, I must write!... Don’t mind me if I ramble a bit, Routledge. I drank rather plenty to welcome you back. Whiskey sizzles along my spine rather faster than once upon a time.... And you haven’t seen Noreen for----?” “For over a year,” Routledge said. “And you haven’t heard that they call her the most beautiful woman in London?” “Yes, Jerry. I heard it from General Falconer at Bombay; from the Sewards in Simla; from Bleakley, who came back to Hong Kong after a year’s leave with a made-over liver and a child-wife. But then I knew it, Jerry--yes, I knew it.” “But she burst into bloom astonishingly after you left us. She has never forgotten you, Routledge.... She is like the Irish girl who gave her to me.” “Come on to bed, Jerry. We drive like carrion-birds across the world wherever there is blood spilt upon the ground. We’re not fit for a woman to remember.” “The woman who gave Noreen to me--could remember and wait, son!... Ah, God, the red hells I have passed through!” Routledge reflected upon the furious emotions which had stormed his old friend in a ten minutes’ walk. From the furnaces of British hate, he had swept to the cold caverns of gloom wherein he had laid the wife of his youth. Only four months ago he had left Cardinegh hard, full-blooded, iron-gray. The dawn showed him now a bent, ashen, darting-eyed old man, of volatile but uncentered speech. The tragedy of it all was germinating in the faculties of the younger man. Moreover, with a thrilling freshness, the night and the return to old London friends had brought back his own memories.... “She has never forgotten you, Routledge!”... Nor had _he_ forgotten the pale, exquisite face of Noreen, large-eyed with listening under the lamp in Cheer Street. Her every change of expression recurred to him; and for each phase of the story he had related, there had been different ranges of sorrow and sympathy. In the queer, sensitive mood, Routledge tried to put away his memories. Only a God was fit to mate with this moment’s conception of Noreen Cardinegh, as he stood with her father in the new day, already defiled by the sprawled army. He wished that he had not seen so much of war. Fate had put a volume of battles into the binding of his brain. In the very centres of his life, series upon series of the world’s late and horrible tableaux had been imprinted. Routledge was impressed with the queer thought that such pictures must dull the delicacy of a man and sear the surface of his soul, like lava over-running a vineyard of Italy. “Will you go home after this little thing is over?” Jerry asked suddenly. “Yes, and it won’t be long.” “You wizard!--what do you mean?” Cardinegh muttered, with a start. “I mean the present bubble is just about to be pricked.”