"I can't, Pat dear; I promised him," I muttered. "But it was nothing disgraceful."
"Disgraceful!" she cried proudly. "Jerry, and anything disgraceful. Oh, my God! Winkle dear," and she broke down utterly, "do you remember the waltz they were playing that day—'Destiny'?"
And then I went. Whether that wonderful woman's intuition has told her something of what happened, I know not. But yesterday morning I got a letter from the Colonel saying that Jerry had chucked his life away, saving a wounded man. And this morning she will have seen it in the papers.
God help you, Pat, my dear.
CHAPTER V
JIM BRENT'S V.C.
If you pass through the Menin-Gate at Ypres, and walk up the slight rise that lies on the other side of the moat, you will come to the parting of the ways. You will at the same time come to a spot of unprepossessing aspect, whose chief claim to notoriety lies in its shell-holes and broken-down houses. If you keep straight on you will in time come to the little village of Potige; if you turn to the right you will eventually arrive at Hooge. In either case you will wish you hadn't.
Before the war these two roads—which join about two hundred yards east of the rampart walls of Ypres—were adorned with a fair number of houses. They were of that stucco type which one frequently sees in England spreading out along the roads that lead to a largish town. Generally there is one of unusually revolting aspect that stands proudly by itself a hundred yards or so from the common herd and enclosed in a stuccoesque wall. And there my knowledge of the type in England ends.