"Not very clearly, George. Sometimes that seems an absolutely unknown adventure. And sometimes it's like that queer feeling--I expect you know it--that you've been somewhere before, or done something before, or heard the same thing before. It lasts for a second, and then it's gone." "Do you think it will continue like that?" "I've stopped thinking about it." "That page you repeated just now. That wasn't a stock page you--keep in rehearsal, so to speak?" "No, that was pukka." I considered my next question carefully. But there was no avoiding it; it had to be put. I watched him deliberately. "Now tell me one other thing. Do you ever remember hearing or writing these words: '_Je tâche de me débrouiller de ces souvenirs-ci?_'" Poor, poor lad! He winced as if I had cut at him with a lash. He turned over on the bank so that I could not see his face. He made no response when I placed my hand on his shoulder. My heart ached for him ... but he had to be shown that any question of love between himself and Jennie Aird was impossible. I shook him. "_Do_ you remember that, Derry?" Slowly he sat up on the bank. He turned a set face on me. "Let me say, Coverham," he said tremulously, "that I went through a whole war without seeing as cowardly a thing as that done. I will not forgive you." And with barely a moment's pause he broke out: "Oh, what am I to do, sir, what am I to do? You're older and wiser than I am--I want help--advice----" * * * * * That is why I have called this portion of his history "The Long Splice." Extremes as wide apart as those met there and interwove their strands. Fortunate it was for me that they did, for had not that last helpless cry been wrung from him I should have been dumb before the bitterness of his reproach. Whether memories of sweetness and light were failing him or not, those of bitterness and gall remained, and it was on this quivering complexity of exposed nerves that I had laid the lash.