A tear rolled down her cheek. I patted myself on the back for an artful fellow. But I had underrated her wit. To my chagrin she did not fall into my trap. "It's the uncertainty that's killing me," she said. And then she burst out disconcertingly: "Do you think he has gone off with that dreadful little Gedge girl?" Phyllis! I was a myriad miles from Phyllis. I was talking about real things. The mother, however, from her point of view, was talking of real things also. But how did she come to know about her son's amours? I thought it useless to enquire. Randall must have advertised his passion pretty widely. I replied: "It's extremely improbable. In the first place Phyllis Gedge isn't dreadful, but a remarkably sweet and modest young woman, and in the second place she won't have anything to do with him." "That's nonsense," she said, bridling. "Why?" "Because--" A gesture and a smile completed the sentence. That a common young person should decline to have dealings with her paragon was incredible. "I can find out in a minute," I smiled, "whether she is still in Wellingsford." I wheeled myself to the telephone on my writing-table and rang up Betty at the hospital. "Do you know where Phyllis Gedge is?" Betty's voice came. "Yes. She's here. I've just left her to come to speak to you. Why do you want to know?" "Never mind so long as she is safe and sound. There's no likelihood of her running away or eloping?" Betty's laughter rang over the wires. "What lunacy are you talking? You might as well ask me whether I'm going to elope with you." "I don't think you're respectful, Betty," I replied. "Good-bye." I rang off and reported Betty's side of the conversation to my visitor. "On that score," said I, "you can make your mind quite easy." "But where can the boy have gone?" she cried. "Into the world somewhere to learn wisdom," I said, and in order to show that I did not speak ironically, I wheeled myself to her side and touched her hand. "I think his swift brain has realised at last that all his smart knowledge hasn't brought him a little bit of wisdom worth a cent. I shouldn't worry. He's working out his salvation somehow, although he may not know it." "Do you really think so?" "I do," said I. "And if he finds that the path of wisdom leads to the German trenches--will you be glad or sorry?" She grappled with the question in silence for a moment or two. Then she broke down and, to my dismay, began to cry. "Do you suppose there's a woman in England that, in her heart of hearts, doesn't want her men folk to fight?" I only allow the earlier part of this chapter to stand in order to show how a man quite well-meaning, although a trifle irascible, may be wanting in Christian charity and ordinary understanding; and of how many tangled knots of human motive, impulse, and emotion this war is a solvent. You see, she defended her son to the last, adopting his own specious line of argument; but at the last came the breaking-point....