"What was it before the war?"
"Soda water syphons and flour; hunting, cricket and making love."
"And you don't think that would still fill the bill?"
"The Lord knows!" laughed Vane. "In the fulness of time probably I shall too."
"And how do you propose to find out?" persisted
the girl.
Once again Vane laughed. "By the simple process of doing nothing," he answered. "I shall—as far as my arduous military duties allow me—carry on. . . . I believe everyone is carrying on. . . . It's the phase, isn't it? And in the process, as far as it progresses before I have to return to France—I may get some idea as to whether I am really a pronounced Pacifist or a Last Ditcher."
For a while she looked at him curiously without speaking. "You're somewhat different from most of my patients," she announced at last.
He bowed ironically. "I trust that in spite of that, I may find favour in your sight. It's something, at any rate, not to be labelled G.S., as we say in the Army."
"Frankly and honestly, you despise me a little?"
Vane considered her dispassionately. "Frankly and honestly, I do. And yet . . . I don't know. Don't you see, lady, that I'm looking at your life through my spectacles; you look at it through your own. For all I know you may be right, and I may be wrong. In fact," he continued after a short pause, "it's more than likely it is so. You at any rate have not been qualifying for a lunatic asylum during the past four years."