"Bobbie--please don't. It can make no difference now. Perhaps we are all wrong--the whole world's upside down somehow. I don't want to feel bitter--I'm not going to feel anything again, I think, and if she's happy--" "She can't be, Scissors!" interrupted Vernley vehemently. "Then she is suffering too--don't make it harder." "It's her fault--no, it's his, I think--he's played upon her sympathy--he caught her with a--" "Bobbie--don't!--We--we can't hit him--now, as he is." Vernley whisked his stick through the air, as though beating his way through a tangle. They walked on in silence. Suddenly he stopped, and confronted his friend, his face quivering, his voice ringing with suppressed emotion. "Scissors--you're a wonderful chap to take it like this! God! if it had been me--I'd have--I'd have--" "Faced it, Bobbie," said John simply, "but why talk about it any more?" But his calm belied him. To the wondering Vernley, it was marvellous self-control and astounding resignation. Even Vernley did not realise that his friend had sunk so low in the waters of despair, that a numbness was upon him; that light and air were no longer the craving of life. He was drowning, and the first fearful struggle had given place to a benumbed acquiescence in Fate. Yes, light and air had gone, that was certain. They never mentioned the subject again, not even when they shook hands for the last time, before John travelled down to the Marshs', prior to sailing. Vernley wanted to take him to "The Croft," but that would have been too much for him, and Vernley realised the artificial naturalness they would all assume, and dropped the project. The sun had set, and the livid upper sky tinged the sullen waters of the Thames, as in the final minutes, they paused at the bottom of Mariton Street. Vernley was walking back along the Embankment to the hospital where he was still a patient, with a shell-splintered leg now healing, two inches permanently short. He grew philosophical in those speeding minutes, as the light died, and the lamps began to glow dimly along the curve of the embankment, running from the darkened East into the fiery West. "What a mess it all is, Scissors--and some old blighters are making speeches about the England that is to be after the war, the era of reconstruction, of glory and peace; and here we are blasting each other off the earth, many of us dead, half of us limping, and none of us quite knowing ourselves as we were. Jove! Sedley seems like a dream--poor old Marsh and Tod, and--my God, what a mess, what a mess, I'm not sure that I care about seeing the end of it! Scissors, it has been wonderful though--we can't be robbed of that by all the damned politicians and the butchering generals. And to have had you for a friend--why it's--" He could not finish--with a silent handshake he suddenly turned, and limped away in the gathering darkness.