I saw him lean forward with his elbows on the window-sill and his hands clenching an iron bar. His face had become like his shirt front, almost as white as that. A kind of groan came from him, like that of a man badly wounded. The people on either side of him turned to look at him, but he was unconscious of them, as he stared at something in the street. I followed the direction of his eyes and guessed that he was looking at a motor-car which had been stopped by the crowd who were surging about it. It was an open car and inside were a young man and woman in fancy-dress as Pierrot and Columbine. They were standing up and pelting the crowd with long coloured streamers, which the mob caught, and tossed back again, with shouts of laughter. The girl was very pretty, with an audacious little face beneath the white sugar-loaf cap, and her eyes were on fire. Her companion was a merry-eyed fellow, clean-shaven and ruddy-faced (for he had not chalked it to Pierrot’s whiteness), and looked to me typical of a naval officer or one of our young air men. I could see nothing to groan about in such a sight. “What’s wrong, Harding?” I touched him on the elbow, for I did not like him to give himself away before the other company in the window-seat. He rose at once, and walked, in a stumbling way, across the room, while I followed. The room was empty where we stood. “Aren’t you well?” I asked. He laughed in a most tragic way. “Did you see those two in the car? Pierrot and Columbine?” I nodded. “Columbine was my wife. Pierrot is now her husband. Funny, isn’t it?” My memory went back to that night in Cologne less than six months before, when Harding had asked me to use my influence to get him demobilised, and as an explanation of his motive opened his pocket-book and showed me the photograph of a pretty girl, and said, “That’s my wife ... she is hipped because I have been away so long.” I felt enormously sorry for him. “Come and have a whiskey in the smoke-room,” said Harding. “I’d like a yarn, and we shall be alone.” I did not want him to tell me his tale. I was tired of tragic history. But I could not refuse. The boy wanted to unburden himself. I could see that, though for quite a time after we had sat on each side of the wood fire, he hesitated in getting to the point and indulged in small-talk about his favourite brand of cigars, and my evil habit of smoking the worst kind of cigarettes. Suddenly we plunged into what was the icy waters of his real thoughts. “About my wife.... I’d like you to know. Others will tell you, and you’d have heard already if you hadn’t been away so long. But I think you would get a wrong notion from others. The fact is, I don’t blame Evelyn. I would like you to understand that. I blame the Germans for everything.” “The Germans?” That was a strange statement, and I could not see the drift of it until he explained his meaning.