"If you burn that cheque, Sonia ..."
She turned a flushed and angry face on me.
"It's mine. I can do what I like with it!"
"Unquestionably. My uncle also is mine. If you burn that cheque, I shall advise Bertrand to take no further steps to help Raney."
She came back from the fire and stood by my bedside, with an expression of mingled perplexity and stubbornness on her face.
"I think you're a perfect beast, George," she said.
I held out my hand for the cheque.
II
It was at the end of this month or the beginning of April that Loring's battalion went to the Front. They had, like almost everyone else, had one or two false alarms, but this time the order was not countermanded. After taking leave of his wife he hurried up to town and dined with me his last night in England.
"According to the statistics I've got about another sixteen days of life," he observed, as we left the Admiralty and walked along the Mall to the Club. "Second Lieutenants seem to last as much as a fortnight sometimes."