I do not know by what transitions they slid together on to the Boer War.  The Boer War happened to be Reggie’s own ground.  He had served in it.  You would have said that Jevons had served in it too, to hear him.  He traced the course of the entire campaign for Reggie’s benefit.  He showed him by what error each regrettable incident (as they called them then) had occurred, and by what strategy it might have been prevented.

And Reggie—­who had been there—­listened respectfully to Jevons.

Viola had lured me into a corner where only scraps of their conversation reached us from time to time.  So I do not know whether it was in connection with the Boer War that Jevons began telling Reggie that journalism was a rotten game; that from birth he had been baulked of his ambition.  He had wanted to be tall and handsome.  He had wanted to be valorous and athletic.  And here he was sent into the world undersized and not even passably good-looking.  And what—­he asked Reggie—­could he do with a physique like his?

I remember Reggie telling Jevons his physique didn’t matter a hang.  He could be a war correspondent in the next war.  I remember Jevons saying in an awful voice:  That was just it.  He couldn’t be anything in the next war—­and, by God, there was a big war coming—­he gave it eight years—­but he couldn’t be in it.  He was an arrant coward.

That, he said, was his tragedy.  His cowardice—­his distaste for danger—­his certainty that if any danger were ever to come near him he would funk.

And I remember Reggie saying, “My dear fellow, if you’ve the courage to say so—­” and Jevons beating off this consolation with a funny gesture of despair.  And then his silence.

It was as if suddenly, in the midst of his gambolling, little Jevons had fallen into an abyss.  He sat there, at the bottom of the pit, staring at us in the misery of the damned.

I looked at Viola.  Her eyelids drooped; her head drooped.  Her whole body drooped under the affliction of his stare, and she would not look at me.

Reggie (he really was decent) tried to turn it off.  “I wouldn’t worry, if I were you,” he said.  “Wait till the war comes.”

“Oh, it’s coming all right,” said little Jevons.  “No fear.”

And as if he could no longer bear to contemplate his cowardice, he said good-bye to us and left.  Reggie’s eyes followed his dejected, retreating figure.

“How quaint!” he said.  “But he’s a smart chap, anyway.  And, mind you, he’s right about that war.”

I said (Heaven knows why, except that I think I must have wanted Reggie’s opinion of Jevons):  “D’you think he’s right about his own cowardice?”

Reggie said, “Ask me another.  You can’t tell.  I only know I’ve seen men look like that and talk like that before an engagement.”

Viola raised her head.  Her voice came with the clear tremor of a bell:  “And did they funk?”