Tietjens went on; for as long as he stayed there he felt himself a man, doing work that befitted a man, with the bitter contempt for fools that a man should have and express. It was a letting up: a real last leave. IV Mark Tietjens, his umbrella swinging sheepishly, his bowler hat pushed firmly down on to his ears to give him a sense of stability, walked beside the weeping girl in the quadrangle. "I say," he said, "don't give it to old Christopher too beastly hard about his militarist opinions. . . . Remember, he's going out to-morrow and he's one of the best." She looked at him quickly, tears remaining upon her cheeks, and then away. "One of the best," Mark said. "A fellow who never told a lie or did a dishonourable thing in his life. Let him down easy, there's a good girl. You ought to, you know." The girl, her face turned away, said: "I'd lay down my life for him!" Mark said: "I know you would. I know a good woman when I see one. And think! He probably considers that he _is_ . . . offering his life, you know, for you. And me, too, of course! . . . It's a different way of looking at things." He gripped her awkwardly but irresistibly by the upper arm. It was very thin under her blue cloth coat. He said to himself: "By Jove! Christopher likes them skinny. It's the athletic sort that attracts him. This girl is as clean run as . . ." He couldn't think of anything as clean run as Miss Wannop, but he felt a warm satisfaction at having achieved an intimacy with her and his brother. He said: "You aren't going away? Not without a kinder word to him. You think! He might be killed. . . . Besides. Probably he's never killed a German. He was a liaison officer. Since then he's been in charge of a dump where they sift army dustbins. To see how they can give the men less to eat. That means that the civilians get more. You don't object to his giving civilians more meat? . . . It isn't even helping to kill Germans. . . ." He felt her arm press his hand against her warm side. "What's he going to do now?" she asked. Her voice wavered. "That's what I'm here about," Mark said. "I'm going in to see old Hogarth. You don't know Hogarth? Old General Hogarth? I think I can get him to give Christopher a job with the transport. A safe job. Safeish! No beastly glory business about it. No killing beastly Germans either. . . . I beg your pardon, if you like Germans." She drew her arm from his hand in order to look him in the face. "Oh!" she said, "_you_ don't want him to have any beastly military glory!" The colour came back into her face: she looked at him open eyed. He said: