"Mrs. Wannop? Oh! My wife has just reminded me that Metternich was the evil genius of the Congress of Vienna. . . ." He said: "Yes! Yes!", and listened. After a time he said: "Oh, you could put it stronger than that. You could put it that the Tory determination to ruin Napoleon at all costs was one of those pieces of party imbecility that, etc. . . . Yes; Castlereagh. And of course Wellington. . . . I'm very sorry I must ring off. . . . Yes; to-morrow at 8.30 from Waterloo. . . . No; I _shan't_ be seeing her again. . . . No; she's made a mistake. . . . Yes; give her my love . . . good-bye." He was reversing the earpiece to hang it up, but a high-pitched series of yelps from the instrument forced it back to his ear: "Oh! _War babies_!" he exclaimed. "I've already sent the statistics off to you! No! there _isn't_ a marked increase of the illegitimacy rate, except in patches. The rate's appallingly high in the lowlands of Scotland; but it always _is_ appallingly high there . . ." He laughed and said good-naturedly: "Oh, you're an old journalist: you won't let fifty quid go for that . . ." He was breaking off. But: "_Or_," he suddenly exclaimed, "here's another idea for you. The rate's about the same, probably because of this: half the fellows who go out to France are reckless because it's the last chance, as they see it. But the other half are made twice as conscientious. A decent Tommie thinks twice about leaving his girl in trouble just before he's killed. . . . The divorce statistics are up, of course, because people will chance making new starts within the law. . . . Thanks . . . thanks . . ." He hung up the earpiece. . . . Listening to that conversation had extraordinarily cleared Sylvia's mind. She said, almost sorrowfully: "I suppose that that's why you don't seduce that girl." And she knew--she had known at once from the suddenly changed inflection of Tietjens' voice when he had said "a decent Tommie thinks twice before leaving his girl in trouble"!--that Tietjens himself had thought twice. She looked at him now almost incredulously, but with great coolness. Why _shouldn't_ he, she asked herself, give himself a little pleasure with his girl before going to almost certain death. . . . She felt a real, sharp pain at her heart. . . . A poor wretch in such a devil of a hole. . . . She had moved to a chair close beside the fireplace and now sat looking at him, leaning interestedly forward, as if at a garden party she had been finding--_par impossible_!--a pastoral play not so badly produced. Tietjens was a fabulous monster. . . .