“But I am putting you out of conceit with the world,” cried James abruptly; “let no one do that. Take all you can, Flemington! I did—I took it all. Love, roystering, good company, good wine, good play—all came to me, and I had my bellyful! There were merry times in Holland with the Scots Brigade. It was the best part of my life, and I went to it young. I was sixteen the day I stood up on parade for the first time.”
“I have often had a mind to invade Holland,” observed Archie, grasping eagerly at the impersonal part of the subject; “it would be paradise to one of my trade. The very thought of a windmill weaves a picture for me, and those strange, striped flowers the Dutchmen raise—I cannot think of their names now—I would give much to see them growing. You must have seen them in every variety and hue.”
“Ay, I saw the tulips,” said James, in a strange voice.
“The Dutchmen can paint them too,” said Archie hurriedly.
“What devil makes you talk of tulips?” cried James. “Fate painted the tulips for me. Oh, Flemington, Flemington! In every country, in every march, in every fight, among dead and dying, and among dancers and the music they danced to, I have seen nothing but those gaudy flowers—beds of them growing like a woven carpet, and Diane among them!”
No feminine figure had come into the background against which stood Archie’s conception of Logie.
“Diane?” he exclaimed involuntarily.
James did not seem to hear him.
“Her eyes were like yours,” he went on. “When I saw you come into the light of the house two evenings since, I thought of her.”
Neither spoke for a few moments; then James went on again: