“That’s a Faversham talking,” said he.  “But there are obstacles, my boy.  There is the Foreign Enlistment Act, for instance.  You are half German, to be sure, but you are an English subject, and, by the Lord! you are all Faversham.  No, I cannot give you permission to seek service in Germany.  You understand.  I cannot give you permission,” he repeated the words, so that the limit as well as the extent of their meaning might be fully understood; and as he repeated them, he solemnly winked.  “Of course, you can go to Germany; you can follow the army as closely as you are allowed.  In fact, I will give you some introductions with that end in view.  You will gain experience, of course; but seek service,—­no!  To do that, as I have said, I cannot give you permission.”

The General went off chuckling to write his letters; and with them safely tucked away in his pocket, Geoffrey drove later in the day to the station.

General Faversham did not encourage demonstrations.  He shook his son cordially by the hand—­

“There’s no way I would rather you spent your furlough.  But come back, Geoff,” said he.  He was not an observant man except in the matter of military detail; and of Geoffrey’s object he had never the slightest suspicion.  Had it been told him, however, he would only have considered it one of those queer, inexplicable vagaries, like the history of his coward in the Crimea.

Geoffrey’s action, however, was of a piece with the rest of his life:  it was due to no sudden, desperate resolve.  He went out to the war as deliberately as he had ridden out to the hunting-field.  The realities of battle might prove his anticipations mere unnecessary torments of the mind.

“If only I can serve,—­as a volunteer, as a private, in any capacity,” he thought, “I shall at all events know.  And if I fail, I fail not in the company of my fellows.  I disgrace only myself, not my name.  But if I do not fail—­” He drew a great breath, he saw himself waking up one morning without oppression, without the haunting dread that he was destined one day to slink in forgotten corners of the world a forgotten pariah, destitute even of the courage to end his misery.  He went out to the war because he was afraid of fear.

II.

On the evening of the capitulation of Paris, two subalterns of German Artillery were seated before a camp fire on a slope of hill overlooking the town.  To both of them the cessation of alarm was as yet strange and almost incomprehensible, and the sudden silence after so many months lived amongst the booming of cannon had even a disquieting effect.  Both were particularly alert on this night when vigilance was never less needed.  If a gust of wind caught the fire and drove the red flare of the flame like a ripple across the grass, one would be sure to look quickly over his shoulder, the other perhaps would lift a warning finger and listen to the shivering of the trees behind them.  Then with a relaxation of his attitude he would say “All right” and light his pipe again at the fire.  But after one such gust, he retained his position.