§ 3
They dressed for dinner that night because Oswald came back tired and vexed from London and wanted a bath before dining. “They seemed to be sending everybody to East Africa on the principle that any one who’s been there before ought not to go again,” he grumbled. “I can’t see any other principle in it.” He talked at first of the coming East African campaign because he hesitated to ask Peter what he intended to do. Then he went on to the war news. The Germans had got Liége. That was certain now. They had smashed the forts to pieces with enormous cannon. There had been a massacre of civilians at Dinant. Joan did not talk very much, but sat and watched Peter closely with an air of complete indifference.
There was a change in him, and she could not say exactly what this change was. The sunshine and snow glare and wind of the high mountains had tanned his face to a hard bronze and he was perceptibly leaner; that made him look older perhaps; but the difference was more than that. She knew her Peter so well that she could divine a new thought in him.
“And what are you going to do, Peter?” said Oswald, coming to it abruptly.
“I’m going to enlist.”
“In the ranks, you mean?” Oswald had expected that.
“Yes.”
“You ought not to do that.”
“Why not?”
“You have your cadet corps work behind you. You ought to take a commission. We shan’t have too many officers.”