"Seems 'ard," he said, running his fingers round the rims. "Still—'ere goes!"
He tore them up slowly and the fragments were whirled away into space by the draught outside.
One small piece floated back to his feet.
"This 'ere is the tail of 'er lungi," he said, picking it up.
And then, since there is nothing conceivable in God's world so sentimental as the British soldier, he slipped it into the cigarette-case where it could tell no tales.
The Philosopher rose to shut the window for there was a nip in the air. He looked back up the line and down on the footboards where a couple of shreds still clung.
"That the best place for them," he said with conviction, drawing up the glass. Then he muttered a profound truth.
"Honesty may be the best policy," he said, "but it ain't the one wot keeps a weddin'-ring from wearin' loose."
Fortified by which assurance, Cyprian had seen the three Galahads alight on Waterloo platform, ten minutes later, each to imprint a chaste salute on the nearest portion of waiting wife, which presented itself at the carriage door with a string bag, a shabby umbrella and dewy eyes.
And as, now, in recalling the whole scene which had deeply impressed him at the time, he compared the insignia of the string bag with that of the white frangipani flower, the cynicism of the Greek Philosopher crossed his mind, who summed up the whole conditions of life, since male and female created He them, in the words: