“Music has never been the art I had most interest in. But many things have moved me intensely.... Debussy and those beautiful little things of Nevin's. You must know them.... Poetry has been more my field. When I was young, younger than you are, quite a lad...Oh, if we could only stay young; I am thirty-two.” “I don't see that youth by itself is worth much. It's the most superb medium there is, though, for other things,” said Andrews. “Well, I must go,” he said. “If you do hear anything about that university scheme, you will let me know, won't you?” “Indeed I shall, dear boy, indeed I shall.” They shook hands in jerky dramatic fashion and Andrews stumbled down the dark hall to the door. When he stood out in the raw night air again he drew a deep breath. By the light that streamed out from a window he looked at his watch. There was time to go to the regimental sergeant-major's office before tattoo. At the opposite end of the village street from the Y. M. C. A. hut was a cube-shaped house set a little apart from the rest in the middle of a broad lawn which the constant crossing and recrossing of a staff of cars and trains of motor trucks had turned into a muddy morass in which the wheel tracks crisscrossed in every direction. A narrow board walk led from the main road to the door. In the middle of this walk Andrews met a captain and automatically got off into the mud and saluted. The regimental office was a large room that had once been decorated by wan and ill-drawn mural paintings in the manner of Puvis de Chavannes, but the walls had been so chipped and soiled by five years of military occupation that they were barely recognisable. Only a few bits of bare flesh and floating drapery showed here and there above the maps and notices that were tacked on the walls. At the end of the room a group of nymphs in Nile green and pastel blue could be seen emerging from under a French War Loan poster. The ceiling was adorned with an oval of flowers and little plaster cupids in low relief which had also suffered and in places showed the laths. The office was nearly empty. The littered desks and silent typewriters gave a strange air of desolation to the gutted drawing-room. Andrews walked boldly to the furthest desk, where a little red card leaning against the typewriter said “Regimental Sergeant-Major.” Behind the desk, crouched over a heap of typewritten reports, sat a little man with scanty sandy hair, who screwed up his eyes and smiled when Andrews approached the desk. “Well, did you fix it up for me?” he asked. “Fix what?” said Andrews. “Oh, I thought you were someone else.” The smile left the regimental sergeant-major's thin lips. “What do you want?” “Why, Regimental Sergeant-Major, can you tell me anything about a scheme to send enlisted men to colleges over here? Can you tell me who to apply to?” “According to what general orders? And who told you to come and see me about it, anyway?” “Have you heard anything about it?”