“’"You make much talk of sin and forgiveness.  Well, Tommy doesn’t understand what you mean by sin.  He is confused to bits about it; but the main thing that stands out is that a man may break all the Ten Commandments theologically and yet be a rattling good pal, as brave as a lion, as merry as a cricket, and the life and soul and Christ of a platoon.  That’s the fact, and it is the one thing that matters.  But there is another thing:  if a man sins, how is he to get forgiveness?  What sort of a God is it Who will wipe the whole blessed thing out because in a moment of enthusiasm the sinner says he is sorry?  If that’s all sin is, it isn’t worth worrying about, and if that is all God is, He’s not got the makings of a decent O.C.”

“’"Good for you, skipper,” said the other man.

“’Langton rounded on him.  “It isn’t good for me or for anyone,” he said.  “And I’ll tell you what, my boy:  all that I’ve said doesn’t justify a man making a beast of himself, which is what the majority of us do.  I can see that a man may very wisely get drunk at times, but he’s a ——­ fool to get himself sodden with drink.” (And he went on to more, Hilda, that I can’t write to you.)

“’Well, I don’t know what I said.  I went back utterly miserable.  Oh, Hilda, I think I never ought to have come out here.  Langton’s right in a way.  We clergy have said the same thing so often that we forget how it strikes a practical common-sense man.  But there must be an answer somewhere, if I only knew it.  Meantime I’m like a doctor among the dying who cannot diagnose the disease.  I’m like a salesman with a shop full of goods that nobody wants because they don’t fulfil the advertisement.  And I never felt more utterly alone in my life.

“’These men talk a different language from mine; they belong to another world.  They are such jolly good fellows that they are prepared to accept me as a comrade without question, but as for my message, I might as well be trying to cure smallpox by mouthing sonorous Virgil—­only it is worse than that, for they no longer even believe that the diagnosis is what I say.  And what gets over me is that they are, on the whole, decent chaps.  There’s Harold—­he’s probably immoral and he certainly drinks too much, but he’s as unselfish as possible, and I feel in my bones he’d do anything to help a friend.

“’Of course, I hate their vices.  The sights in the streets make me feel positively sick.  I wouldn’t touch what they touch with a stick.  When I think of you, so honest and upright and clean....’  Oh, but I needn’t read that, Uncle Bob.”  She turned over a page or so.  “I think that’s all.  No, just this: 

“’I’ve been made mess secretary, and I serve out coffee in the canteen for a couple of hours every other day.  That’s about all there is to do.  I wish to Heaven I had an ordinary commission!”

The girl’s voice ceased with a suspicious suddenness, and the man’s hand tightened on her arm.  For a minute they remained so, and then, impulsively and unrestrained, she half-turned and sobbed out against his knees: