But Morgan did not comment. Mavering thought him likely to be dull company, and set himself to making other acquaintance and finding entertainment with experienced skill. The troop filed out, formed loosely, and clattered south. It occurred to Mavering that they might overtake Gard. Down through the narrow valleys they came at length to the willow-fringed bank of the river, but he saw the broad-brimmed hat nowhere. It seemed to have vanished from the earth. Mavering concluded his connection with it over. New pastures of interest were before him. The nomad owns no real estate in any one else. His soul knows not title or tenure. He will be folding his tent at daybreak and leaving the night's oasis, and the sands drift over his footprints. Chapter XIV In which Mavering Concludes that Cavalry Officers as a Class Are Eccentric and Deep The war suited Morgan. It was action in simple terms of purpose and accomplishment. It was sensible and genuine. There no man's complicated trivial tastes and instincts needed to be bothered about; he carried them at his own risk and exercise; they were not in the army lists. Orders were not disguised in requests and reasons. The gradations and shades, the cautions and compunctions, the ten thousand odds and ends of ten thousand years' accumulation for the most part were swept away in bulk. Men battled with men and threw off their shamming benevolences, showed what they were, and enjoyed themselves in the burly lust of struggle. The life satisfied at least half of him to completion. A fortnight before the late battle he had seen Helen on the steps of the wooden warehouse, that they used as a hospital and filled from wall to wall with blanketed cots. She had looked pale, tired, and smiling. After a moment she had flushed and broken away angrily. And that night he had lain twenty miles off with his troop in the open, a lot of blinking, idiotic stars over him, and could not sleep, and damned in disciplined order the ways of woman and the impalpable barriers around them--Thaddeus Bourn, for keeping his skinny corpse unburied beyond the limit of reason or utility; and Gard Windham to the discomfort of the blistered stars. There appeared to be another part of him unsatisfied--hungry, rather, and hot on the scent.