As a matter of fact they appointed another Brigadier who had started the war with a new Yeomanry commission, a member of a well-known family with a wife who had seen to it that neither his light nor hers should be hidden under a bushel. In the frantic scramble for place, the inexperienced in the methods of the scrum were as much left out in the cold as a timid old maid at what Americans call a bargain counter. He stood lost behind the throng and his only adviser Lady Auriol stood by his side in similar noble bewilderment. On his appointment to a Brigade, Bakkus had written: "I'm almost tempted to make your fortune in spite of yourself. What a sensation! What headlines! 'Famous Variety Artist becomes a General.' Companion pictures in the _Daily Mail_, Petit Patou and Brigadier-General Lackaday. Everybody who had heard of Petit Patou would be mad to hear of General Lackaday, and all who had heard of soldier Andrew would be crazy to know about Petit Patou. You'd wake up in the morning like Byron and find yourself famous. You'd be the darling hero of the British Empire. But you always were a wooden-headed idiot...." To which Andrew had replied in raging fury, to the vast entertainment of Horatio Bakkus. All of this to show that, notwithstanding his supreme qualities of personal courage, command and military intuition, Andrew Lackaday as a would-be soldier of fortune proved a complete failure. For him, as he presented himself, the tired world, in its nebulous schemes of reconstruction, had no place. Every day, when he got home, Elodie would ask: "_Eh bien?_ Have you found anything?" And he would say, gaunt and worried, but smiling: "Not yet." As the days passed her voice grew sharper, until it seemed to carry the reproach of the wife of the labourer out of work. But she never pressed him further. She knew his moods and his queer silences and the inadvisability of forcing his confidence. In spite of her disappointment and disillusion, some of the glamour still invested him. A man of mystery, inspiring a certain awe, he frightened her a little. A No Man's Land, unknown, terrifying, on which she dared not venture a foot, lay between them. He was the kind and courteous ghost of the Sergeant and the Major with whom she had made high festival during the war. At last, one afternoon, he cast the bomb calmly at her feet. "I've just been to see Moignon," said he. "_Eh bien?_" "He says there will be no difficulty." She turned on him her coarse puzzled face. "No difficulty in what?" "In going back to the stage." She sank upon the yellow and brown striped sofa by the wall and regarded him open-mouthed. "_Tu dis?_" "I must do like all other demobilized men--return to my trade." Elodie nearly fainted.