"But, my dear fellow! You! Good God!" and then to Sylvia: "I beg your pardon!" To clear his mind he said again to Tietjens: "_You_! Going out to-morrow!" And, when the idea was really there, his face suddenly cleared. He looked with a swift, averted glance at Sylvia's face and then for a fixed moment at Tietjens' oil-stained tunic. Tietjens could see him explaining to himself with immense enlightenment that _that_ explained both Sylvia's tears and the oil on the tunic. For Port Scatho might well imagine that officers went to the conflict in their oldest clothes. . . . But, if his puzzled brain cleared, his distressed mind became suddenly distressed doubly. He had to add to the distress he had felt on entering the room and finding himself in the midst of what he took to be a highly emotional family parting. And Tietjens knew that during the whole war Port Scatho had never witnessed a family parting at all. Those that were not inevitable he would avoid like the plague, and his own nephew and all his wife's nephews were in the bank. That was quite proper for, if the ennobled family of Brownlie were not of the Ruling Class--who had to go!--they were of the Administrative Class, who were privileged to stay. So he had seen no partings. Of his embarrassed hatred of them he gave immediate evidence. For he first began several sentences of praise of Tietjens' heroism which he was unable to finish and then getting quickly out of his chair exclaimed: "In the circumstances then . . . the little matter I came about . . . I couldn't of course think . . ." Tietjens said: "No; don't go. The matter you came about--I know all about it of course--had better be settled." Port Scatho sat down again: his jaw fell slowly: under his bronzed complexion his skin became a shade paler. He said at last: "You know what I came about? But then . . ." His ingenuous and kindly mind could be seen to be working with reluctance: his athletic figure drooped. He pushed the letter that he still held along the tablecloth towards Tietjens. He said, in the voice of one awaiting a reprieve: "But you _can't_ be . . . aware . . . Not of this letter. . . ." Tietjens left the letter on the cloth, from there he could read the large handwriting on the blue-grey paper: "Mrs. Christopher Tietjens presents her compliments to Lord Port Scatho and the Honourable Court of Benchers of the Inn. . . ." He wondered where Sylvia had got hold of that phraseology: he imagined it to be fantastically wrong. He said: "I have already told you that I know about this letter, as I have already told you that I know--and I will add that I approve!--of all Mrs. Tietjens' actions. . . ." With his hard blue eyes he looked brow-beatingly into Port Scatho's soft brown orbs, knowing that he was sending the message: "Think what you please and be damned to you!" The gentle brown things remained on his face; then they filled with an expression of deep pain. Port Scatho cried: "But good God! Then . . ."