In the morning he received a note from Sir Gerald Seymour Stukeley.  It was brief and clear:—­“Sandhurst is scarcely the place for a squealing coward, still less the Army.  Nor is there room for one at Monksmead.  I shall not have the pleasure of seeing you before you catch the 11.15 train; I might say things better left unsaid.  I thank God you do not bear our name though you have some of our blood.  This will be the one grain of comfort when I think that the whole County is gibing and jeering.  No—­your name is no more Seymour Stukeley than is your nature.  If you will favour my Solicitors with your address, they will furnish you with an account of your patrimony and such balance thereof as may remain—­if any.  But I believe you came to England worth about fifty pounds—­which you have probably spent as pocket-money.  I beg of you to communicate with me or my household in no way whatsoever.

“G.S.S.”

Hastily dressing, Dam fled from the house on foot, empty handed and with no money but a five-pound note legitimately his own private property.  On his dressing-table he left the cheque given to him by his “grandfather” for ensuing Sandhurst expenses.  Hiding in the station waiting-room, he awaited the next train to London—­with thoughts of recruiting-sergeants and the Guards.  From force of habit he travelled first-class, materially lessening his five pounds.  In the carriage, which he had to himself, he sat stunned.  He was rather angry than dismayed and appalled.  He was like the soldier, cut down by a sabre-slash or struck by a bullet, who, for a second, stares dully at the red gash or blue hole—­waiting for the blood to flow and the pain to commence.

He was numbed, emotionally dead, waiting the terrible awakening to the realization that he had lost Lucille.  What mattered the loss of home, career, friends, honour—­mere anti-climax to glance at it.

Yesterday!...  To-day!

What was Lucille thinking?  What would she do and say?  Would she grow to hate the coward who had dared to make love to her, dared to win her love!

Would she continue to love him in spite of all?

I shall enjoy waiting twenty years for you, she had said yesterday, and The world would be quite empty if you left it.  What would it be while he remained in it a publicly disgraced coward?  A coward ridiculed by the effeminate, degenerate Haddock, who had no soul above club-ribbons, and no body above a Piccadilly crawl!

Could she love him in spite of all?  She was great-hearted enough for anything.  Perhaps for anything but that.  To her, cowardice must be the last lowest depths of degradation.  Anyhow he had done the straight thing by Grumper, in leaving the house without any attempt to let her know, to say farewell, to ask her to believe in him for a while.  If there had been any question as to the propriety of his trying to become engaged to her when he was the penniless gentleman-cadet, was there any question about it when he was the disgraced out-cast, the publicly exposed coward?