thoroughbred sensibilities were just degraded. But he had chosen, so he
accepted. An ugly little look came on to his face, of a man who has
accepted his own degradation.

In the early spring Winifred went down to Crockham to be there when
primroses were out, and the tassels hanging on the hazel-bushes. She felt
something like a reconciliation towards Egbert, now he was a prisoner in
camp most of his days. Joyce was wild with delight at seeing the garden
and the common again, after the eight or nine months of London and
misery. She was still lame. She still had the irons up her leg. But she
lurched about with a wild, crippled agility.

Egbert came for a week-end, in his gritty, thick, sand-paper khaki and
puttees and the hideous cap. Nay, he looked terrible. And on his face a
slightly impure look, a little sore on his lip, as if he had eaten too
much or drunk too much or let his blood become a little unclean. He was
almost uglily healthy, with the camp life. It did not suit him.

Winifred waited for him in a little passion of duty and sacrifice,
willing to serve the soldier, if not the man. It only made him feel a
little more ugly inside. The week-end was torment to him: the memory of
the camp, the knowledge of the life he led there; even the sight of his
own legs in that abhorrent khaki. He felt as if the hideous cloth went
into his blood and made it gritty and dirty. Then Winifred so ready to
serve the _soldier_, when she repudiated the man. And this made the grit
worse between his teeth. And the children running around playing and
calling in the rather mincing fashion of children who have nurses and
governesses and literature in the family. And Joyce so lame! It had all
become unreal to him, after the camp. It only set his soul on edge. He
left at dawn on the Monday morning, glad to get back to the realness and