But no one dared touch Clowes.  “Before his sister!” Selincourt muttered.  He had no idea what was coming but Val’s grey pallor frightened him.  “And the old man!” Lawrence added with clenched hands.  Clowes ignored them both.  He held the entire group in subjection by sheer savage force of personality.

“Simple little anecdote of war.  Dale, you remember, was a brother officer of mine.  He was shot in a raid and left hanging on the German wire.  In the night when he was dying another chap in our regiment, that had been lying up all day between the lines with a bullet in his ribs, crawled across for him.  The Boches opened fire but he got Dale off and started back.  Three quarters of the way over they found a third casualty, a subaltern in the Dorchesters.  This chap wasn’t hurt but he was weeping with fear.  He had gone to ground in a shellhole during the advance and stayed there too frightened to move.  The Winchester man was by now done to the world.  He kicked the Dorchester to his feet and ordered him to carry on with Dale.  The Dorchester pointed out that if he turned up without a scratch on him, he would probably be shot by court martial, so the other fellow by way of pretext put a shot through his arm.  ’Now you can tell ’em it was you who fetched Dale.’  ‘Oh I can’t, I’m frightened,’ says the Dorchester boy.  ‘By God you shall,’ says the other, ’or I’ll put a second bullet through your brains.’  Now, Val, you finish telling us how you did the return trip in tears with Dale on your shoulders and Lawrence at your heels chivying you with a revolver.”

“You unutterable devil,” said Lawrence under his breath, “who told you that?”

Bernard grinned at him almost amicably.  He had got one blow home at last and felt better.  “Why, I’ve always known it.  Dale told me himself.  He lived twenty minutes after you got him in.”

“Val,” said Mr. Stafford, “this isn’t true?”

“Perfectly true, sir.”

Undefended, unreserved, stripped even of pride, Val stood up before them all as if before a firing party, for the others had involuntarily fallen back leaving him alone. . . .  To Lawrence the silence seemed endless, it went on and on, while through the open doorway grey shadows crept in, the leafy smell of night and the liquid river-murmur so much louder than it could have been heard by day.  Suddenly, as if he could not stand the strain any longer, Val covered his eyes with his hands.  The movement, full of shame galvanized Lawrence into activity.  But he had not the courage to approach Val.  He had but one desire which was to get out of the house.

“Bernard, if you weren’t a cripple I’d put the fear of God into you with a stick” He stood near the door eyeing his cousin with a cold dislike more cutting than anger.  “You’re as safe as a woman.  But I’m through with you.  I’ll never forgive you this, never.  I’m going:  and I shall take your wife with me.”  He turned.  “Come, Laura—­”