His eyes followed a girl who passed with her officer brother. He would have liked a healthy, pretty, jolly sort of girl like that to go about with ... some girl with poise, and tone, and sanity, and no nerves, who never bothered about the war or anything. A placid, indifferent, healthy sort of girl, with all her fingers on and nothing the matter anywhere. He was sick of hurt and damaged bodies and minds; his artistic instinct and his natural vitality craved, in reaction, for the beautiful and the whole and the healthy....

Looking up, he saw Alix standing at the corner of the Strand, leaning on her ivory-topped stick and looking at him. She looked pale and thin and frail and pretty in her blue coat and skirt and white collar. (The Sandomirs never wore mourning.) He went up to her, a smile lifting his brows.

'Good. I was just feeling bored. Let's come and have tea.'

Alix wasn't really altogether what he wanted. She was too nervy. Some nerve in him which had been badly jarred by the long ugliness of those months in France winced from contact with nervous people. Besides, he suspected her of feeling the same shrinking from him: she so hated the war and all its products. However, they had always amused each other; she was clever, and nice to look at; he remembered vaguely that he had been a little in love with her once, before the war. If the war hadn't come just then, he might have become a great deal in love with her. Before the war one had wanted a rather different sort of person, of course, from now; more of a companion, to discuss things with; more of a stimulant, perhaps, and less of a rest. He remembered that they had discussed painting a great deal; he didn't want to discuss painting now, since he had lost his finger. He didn't particularly want cleverness either, since trench life, with its battery on the brain of sounds and sights, had made him stupid....

However, he said, 'Let's come and have tea,' and she answered, 'Very well, let's,' and they turned into something in the Strand called the Petrograd Tea Rooms.

'I suppose one mustn't take milk in it here,' said Alix vaguely. She looked him over critically as they sat down, and said, 'You don't look much use yet.'

'So I am told. They say I shall probably have at least a month's more leave.... Well, I don't much care.... There's a rumour my battalion may be sent to Serbia soon. I met a man on leave to-day, and he says that's the latest canard. I rather hope it's true. It will be a change, anyhow, and there'll be something doing out there. Besides, we may as well see the world thoroughly on this show, while we are about it. We shall never have such a chance again, I suppose. It's like a Cook's tour gratis. France, Flanders, Egypt, Gallipoli, Serbia, Greece.... I may see them all yet. This war has its humours, I'll say that for it. A bizarre war indeed, as some titled lunatic woman driving a motor ambulance round Ypres kept remarking to us all. 'Dear me, what a very bizarre war!' It sounded as if she had experienced so many, and as if they were mostly so normal and conventional and flat.'

'Bizarre.' Alix turned the word over. 'Yes, I suppose that is really what it is.... It's the wrong shape; it fits in with nothing; it's mad.... My cousin Emily says it's a righteous war, though of course war is very wicked. Righteous of us and wicked of the Germans, I suppose she means. And Kate says it was sent us, for getting drunk and not going to church enough. I don't know how she knows. Do you meet people who talk like that?'

'I chiefly meet people who ask me why I'm not taking part in it. There was one to-day, in Trafalgar Square. She told me I ought to be in khaki. I said I supposed I ought, properly speaking, but that I was waiting to be fetched. She said it was young fellows like me who disgraced Britain before the eyes of Europe, and that I wouldn't like being fetched, because then I should have to wear C for Coward on my tunic. I said I should rather enjoy that, and we parted pleasantly.'

'The wide ones are two and eleven three, and the narrow ones one and nine. I like B. & H.'s better than Evans', myself.'