He nodded, smilingly attentive.

"Of course when he went away to school it was different," she added.
"And then he went to Yale; that was four more years, you see."

"I was a Yale man," remarked Selwyn; "did he--" but he broke off
abruptly, for he knew quite well that young Erroll could have made no
senior society without his hearing of it. And he had not heard of
it--not in the cane-brakes of Leyte where, on his sweat-soaked shirt, a
small pin of heavy gold had clung through many a hike and many a scout
and by many a camp-fire where the talk was of home and of the chances of
crews and of quarter-backs.

"What were you going to ask me, Captain Selwyn?"

"Did he row--your brother Gerald?"

"No," she said. She did not add that he had broken training; that was
her own sorrow, to be concealed even from Gerald. "No; he played polo
sometimes. He rides beautifully, Captain Selwyn, and he is so clever
when he cares to be--at the traps, for example--and--oh--anything. He
once swam--oh, dear, I forget; was it five or fifteen or fifty miles? Is
that _too_ far? Do people swim those distances?"

"Some of those distances," replied Selwyn.

"Well, then, Gerald swam some of those distances--and everybody was
amazed. . . . I do wish you knew him well."