“Courage,” he said with that gallant look of his which I had seen with admiration when he walked up the old duckboards beyond Ypres, with a whimsical smile at “crumps” bursting abominably near--he had done bravely in the old days, as a battalion commander--“Courage is merely a pose before the mirror of one’s own soul and one’s neighbours. We are all horribly afraid in moments of danger, but some of us have the gift of pretending that we don’t mind. That is vanity. We like to look heroes, even to ourselves. It is good to die with a _beau geste_, though death is damnably unpleasant.” “I agree, Colonel,” said Charles Fortune. “Always the right face for the proper occasion. But it wants a lot of practice.” He put on his gallant, devil-may-care face, and there was appreciative laughter from his fellow-officers. Harding, the young landowner, was of opinion that courage depended entirely on the liver. “It is a matter of physical health,” he said. “If I am out-of-sorts, my _moral_ goes down to zero. Not that I’m ever really brave. Anyhow I hate things that go off. Those loud noises of bursting shells are very objectionable. I shall protest against Christmas crackers after the war.” Young Clatworthy was in the sulks, and sat very silent during all this badinage. “What’s the matter?” I asked, and he confided to me his conviction, while he passed the salt, that “life was a rummy game.” “Hipped?” I said, and his answer was, “Fed up to the back teeth!” That seemed to me curious, after the glimpse I had had of him with a little lady of Lille. The boy explained himself somewhat, under cover of the Colonel’s conversation, which was holding the interest of the mess. “We’re living unnaturally,” he said. “It’s all an abnormal show, and we pretend to be natural and normal, when everything that happens round us is fantastic and disorderly.” “What’s your idea?” I enquired. It was the first time I had heard the boy talk seriously, or with any touch of gravity. “Hard to explain,” he said. “But take my case to-day. This morning I went up the line to interrogate the latest batch of P.O.W’s.” (He meant prisoners of war). “A five-point-nine burst within ten yards of my car, the other side of Courtrai, killed my driver and missed me by a couple of inches. I felt as sick as a dog when I saw Saunders crumpled over his steering-wheel, with blood pouring down his neck. Not that it’s the first time I’ve seen blood!” He laughed as he gave a glance at his wound-stripe, and I remembered the way in which he had gained his M.C. at Gommecourt--one of three left alive in his company.