"You might go for a time," I replied guardedly, "and return later on when you get stronger."
He started to laugh, but a quick stabbing pain in the chest caught him halfway, and he stopped short with a twisted smile as he exclaimed:
"I believe the old chap has been talking to you too! You're all in league to get me out of France."
This was so close to the truth that I could not contradict him, but shook my head in partial negative. His uncle felt, as I too came to feel later, that the loss to the world of such a brilliant mind and one with such potentialities would not be compensated for by the little good its master could accomplish physically in the trenches.
"After all," he argued, "how much poorer would Wales be if I were gone? The hole would soon be filled."
"I can't agree with you," I answered slowly; "your life is more important to others than you think, and you would risk it in a field for which you are not physically fitted. You have overdrawn your brain account at the Bank of Nature, and flesh is paying up. You must go home until the note is settled."
"Sounds rational but horribly mathematical—and I always hated mathematics. Hope I'll be able," he continued mischievously, "to repay the 'interest' you and uncle are taking in me."
"We want you to consider the matter philosophically," I said, "not mathematically."
"That's better," he replied, with his usual bright smile; "philosophy comes more natural to me. True, it savours of Euclid, but I can forgive it that offence; it has so many virtues."
He remained silent a few moments, thinking, and then asked me suddenly: "If I go home, how soon can I get back to France?"