"Look on the other side."
I took it up and found that the reverse contained the head cut out from some photograph of Betty. After I had handed back the locket, he slipped it on the chain and dropped it beneath his collar.
"I'm not a damned fool," said he.
I nodded understandingly. No one would have accused him of mawkish sentiment. The woman whose portrait he wore night and day next his skin was the woman he loved. He had no other way of proving his sincerity than by exhibiting the token.
"I see," said I. "What do you propose to do?"
"I've told you. The V.C. or—" He snapped his fingers.
"But if it's the V.C. and a Brigade, and perhaps a Division—if it's everything else imaginable except—" I snapped my fingers in imitation—"What then?"
Again the hateful twitch of the lips, which he quickly dissimulated in a smile.
"I'll begin to try to be a brave man." He lit another cigarette. "But all that, my dear Meredyth," he continued, "is away from the point. If I live, I'll ask you to forget this rotten palaver. But I have a feeling that I shan't come back. Something tells me that my particular form of extermination will be a head knocked into slush. I'm absolutely certain that I shall never see you again. Oh, I'm not morbid," he said, as I raised a protesting hand. "You're an old soldier and know what these premonitions are. When I came in—before I had finally made up my mind to pan out to you like this—I felt like a boy who has been made captain of the school. But all the same, I know I shan't see you again. So I want you to promise me two things—quite honourable and easy."
"Of course, my dear fellow," said I rather tartly, for I did not like the wind-up of his sentence. It was unthinkable that an officer and a gentleman should inveigle a brother-officer into a solemn promise to do anything dishonourable. "Of course. Anything you like."