aristocrats--the social position I step into. I don't know whether you can
quite follow me."

"As a distinguished soldier," said I, "apart from your charming personal
qualities, you command that position."

He screwed up his mobile face. "I can't understand it. It's like a
nightmare and a fairy-tale jumbled up together. On the outbreak of war I
came to England and joined up. In a few months I had a commission. I don't
know..." he spread out his ungainly arm--"I fell into the metier--the
business of soldiering. It came easy to me. Except that it absorbed me body
and soul, I can't see that I had any particular merit. Whatever I have
done, it would have been impossible, in the circumstances, not to do. Out
there I'm too busy to think of anything but my day's work. As for these
things"--he touched his ribbons--"I put them up because I'm ordered to. A
matter of discipline. But away from the Army I feel as though I were made
up for a part which I'm expected to play without any notion of the words.
I feel just as I would have done five years ago if I had been dressed like
this and planted here. To go about now disguised as a General only adds to
the feeling."

"If you'll pardon me for saying so," said I, "I think you're
super-sensitive. You imagine yourself to be the same man that you were five
years ago. You're not. You're a different human being altogether. Men with
characters like yours must suffer a sea-change in this universal tempest."

"I hope not," said he, "for what will become of me when it's all over?
Everything must come to an end some day--even the war."

I laughed. "Don't you see how you must have changed? Here you are looking