He expounded the godlike wisdom of young Oxford at some length, replying vividly to here and there a Socratic interpolation on my part. After a while I began to grow irritated. His talk, like his verse, seemed to deal with unrealities. It was a negation of everything, save the intellectual. If he and his friends had been in power, there would never have been a war; there never would have been a German menace; the lamb would have lain down in peace, outside the lion. He had an airy way of dismissing the ruder and more human aspects of the war. Said I:-- "Anyone can talk of what might have been. But that's all over and done with. We're up against the tough proposition of the present. What are you doing for it?" He waved a hand. "That's just the point. The present doesn't matter--not in the wide conception of things. It is the past and the future that count. The present is mere fluidity." "The poor devils up to their waists in water in the trenches would agree with you," said I. "They would also agree with me," he retorted, "if they had time to go into the reconstruction of the future that we are contemplating." At this juncture Marigold came in with the decanters and syphons. I noticed his one eye harden on the velvet dinner-jacket. He fidgeted about the room, threw a log on the fire, drew the curtains closer, always with an occasional malevolent glance at the jacket. Then Randall, like a silly young ass, said, from the depths of his easy chair, a very silly thing. "I see you've not managed to get into khaki yet, Sergeant." Marigold took a tactical pace or two to the door. "Neither have you, sir," he said in a respectful tone, and went out. Randall laughed, though I saw his dark cheek flush. "If Marigold had his way he would have us all in a barrack square." "Preferably in those fluid trenches of the present," said I. "And he wouldn't be far wrong." My eyes rested on him somewhat stonily. People have complained sometimes--defaulters, say, in the old days--that there can be a beastly, nasty look in them. "What do you mean, Major?" he asked. "Sergeant Marigold," said I, "is a brave, patriotic Englishman who has given his country all he can spare from the necessary physical equipment to carry on existence; and it's making him hang-dog miserable that he's not allowed to give the rest to-morrow. You must forgive his plain speaking," I continued, gathering warmth as I went on, "but he can't understand healthy young fellows like you not wanting to do the same. And, for the matter of that, my dear Randall, neither do I. Why aren't you serving your country?" He started forward in his chair and threw out his arms, and his dark eyes flashed and a smile of conscious rectitude overspread his clear-cut features. "My dear Major--serving my country? Why, I'm working night and day for it. You don't understand." "I've already told you I don't."