“Your husband, Madame, is a man who does not know what fear is—­who does not care what death is.  For two nights and three days, Madame, he has been down there—­at Alost and Termonde—­under shell-fire. Mais—­un enfer, Madame! You would have thought he had been born under fire, your husband. Ce n’est pas un homme, c’est un salamandre.  Bullets—­mitrailleuse—­shrapnel—­it is no more to him than to go out in a shower of rain.  When our men were scuttling, and shouted to him to get under shelter, what do you think he said?—­’Ouvrir une parapluie—­ca ne vaut pas la peine.”

There was a shout of laughter.

“That,” said Viola, “is the sort of thing he would say.  And please, I want to know what’s the matter with his leg.”

I can see her now, sitting on that crimson velvet seat in the lounge and looking past the gesticulations of the General to Jevons, who was shaking his head at her as much as to say, “Don’t you believe the old boy, he’s a shocking story-teller.”

The old General seemed aware of her preoccupation, for he rose, murmuring affectionately, “Mon petit Chevons.  I will not praise him to you, Madame.  No doubt you know what he is.”

I can see her standing up there and giving her hand to the old General and trying to stiffen her face to say, “I know.”

Evidently she thought General Roubaix was too voluble to be entirely trustworthy, for, when he left us and Jimmy had gone out to see about our dinner, she addressed herself to the two Colonels.

“Please tell me what my husband really did.”

Both the Colonels tried to tell her; but it was the younger one with the moustache (the one who had said that Jimmy was "impayable") who satisfied her.

It was true, every bit of it.  Jevons, it seemed, had been in the thick of the bombardment of Alost and in the fighting for the bridge at Termonde.  His practice was to leave Kendal and the motor-car behind him in some place of shelter while he walked into the fire.  Sometimes he took his Belgian stretcher-bearers with him, sometimes, when they didn’t like the look of it, he went by himself.  He didn’t care, the Colonel said, where he went or how.  If it was through rifle-fire or mitrailleuse he went on his hands and knees—­he wriggled on his stomach.  If it was shrapnel he took his chance.  He had saved one of his three officers by carrying him straight out of his own battery, when the German guns had found its range; and he had driven his car, by himself, across a five-mile-long field, under a hailstorm of shrapnel, to get the other two.

“You see,” the Colonel expounded, “your husband has chosen the most dangerous of all field ambulance work.  Those high-speed scouting cars, running low on the ground, can go where a big ambulance cannot.  It is magnificent what he has done.”

When Jevons came back they could still hardly keep their eyes off him; they could hardly tear themselves away.  It was “A demain, Monsieur,” and “A demain, Colonel” as if they had arranged another deadly tryst.