"My God!" cried Doggie, "haven't I thought of it till I'm half mad? It would be just as you say--unendurable." He began to pace the room again. "And I can't go to France. It would be just the same as England. Every one would be looking white feathers at me. The only thing I can do is to go out of the world. I'm not fit for it. Oh, I don't mean suicide. I've not enough pluck. That's off. But I could go and bury myself in the wilderness somewhere where no one would ever find me." "Laddie," said McPhail, "I misdoubt that you're going to settle down in any wilderness. You haven't the faculty of adaptability of which I have spoken to-night at some length. And your heart is young and not coated with the holy varnish of callousness, which is a secret preparation known only to those who have served a long apprenticeship in a severe school of egotism." "That's all very well," cried Doggie, "but what the----" Phineas waved an interrupting hand. "You've got to go back, laddie. You've got to whip all the moral courage in you and go back to Durdlebury. The Dean, with his influence, and the letter you have shown me from your Colonel, can easily get you some honourable employment in either Service not so exacting as the one which you have recently found yourself unable to perform." Doggie threw a newly-lighted cigarette into the fire and turned passionately on McPhail. "I won't. You're talking drivelling rot. I can't. I'd sooner die than go back there with my tail between my legs. I'd sooner enlist as a private soldier." "Enlist?" said Phineas, and he drew himself up straight and gaunt. "Well, why not?" "Enlist?" echoed Doggie in a dull tone. "Have you never contemplated such a possibility?" "Good God, no!" said Doggie. "I have enlisted. And I am a man of ancient lineage as honourable, so as not to enter into unproductive argument, as yours. And I am a Master of Arts of the two Universities of Glasgow and Cambridge. Yet I fail to find anything dishonourable in my present estate as 33702 Private Phineas McPhail in the British Army." Doggie seemed not to hear him. He stared at him wildly. "Enlist?" he repeated. "As a Tommy?" "Even as a Tommy," said Phineas. He glanced at the ormolu clock. "It is past one. The respectable widow woman near the Elephant and Castle who has let me a bedroom will be worn by anxiety as to my non-return. Marmaduke, my dear, dear laddie, I must leave you. If you will be lunching here twelve hours hence, nothing will give me greater pleasure than to join you. Laddie, do you think you could manage a fried sole and a sweetbread?" "Enlist?" said Doggie, following him out to the front door in a dream. He opened the door. Phineas shook hands. "Fried sole and a sweetbread at one-thirty?" "Of course, with pleasure," said Doggie. Phineas fumbled in his pockets. "It's a long cry at this time of night from Bloomsbury to the Elephant and Castle. You haven't the price of a taxi fare about you, laddie--two or three pounds----?"