With the guttural good wishes of Herr Klotz still in our ears (we had pledged eternal friendship in three foaming mugs of beer), we sought the street, to find that dusk was settling over the city. For some moments neither spoke, but feeling that perhaps I had descended too abruptly from my pedestal, I cleared my throat and ventured on a remark. "A decent fellow," I said patronizingly, and felt my dignity reasserting myself; but Norman failed to hear me. He was lost in some memory. Now that I look back, I wonder was it the picture of the sick woman he saw or his vision of the mother with her two sons; or, with his gift of intuition, could he see, less than a year ahead, Klotz, in a German soldier's uniform, marching through Belgium with an army of lust and rapine, gorged like gluttonous, venomous beasts? I wonder. VIII It was from an aunt of mine that I first heard of Norman's attachment to Lilias Oxley. Whenever I received a letter from my relative, I had first to realize that its mission was to educate, not to entertain. She was a woman of strong ideas, and, as my mother died very early in my life, she seldom lost an opportunity of impressing a moral--like the Queen in _Alice in Wonderland_. In her correspondence, and to a large extent in her conversation, my aunt was given to dashes, underlines, and exclamation-marks. It is perhaps unnecessary to state that she was a single woman. I received the letter two months after Christmas; it was dated from the Beacon at Hindhead. "MY DEAR NEPHEW,--You will find mentholated crystals--carried in a small bottle--a splendid preventive against the present epidemic of cold in the head! Sniff a little every night before going to bed. "When are you going to marry? For goodness' sake, marry a _dark_ girl when you do. Our family is growing positively colorless! "Your friend, Mr. Norman, is visiting the Oxleys down here. It seems young Oxley is trying to write a play with some ideas in it, and Norman thinks he can help him! Who in the world wants to see a play with _their_ ideas! It's a pity you couldn't teach him to do something useful--Norman, I mean.--Young Oxley is going into the Church! Why doesn't he go to Canada! I mean _Norman_. "Do you remember little Lilias Oxley? She had pneumonia last year, though I _warned_ her mother about flannel soaked in goose-oil and turpentine! She always looked like a hothouse flower, and now she is simply _frail_. Of course, she's pretty and has eyes that always makes fools of the men--not that _that_ signifies! Everybody says she's artistic, but all I ever hear her play is by some newfangled foreigner named Debussy, and it's all discord. She's only nineteen and looks sixteen.