like this.  My excuse is that you yourself had rather vaguely referred to some wound or blood poisoning or operation, on the jaw or the throat.  Not to beat about the bush any more, the idea came into my mind that if in some way the knife or the enemy’s bullet had interfered with your thyroid gland—­Twig what I mean?  I mean, that if your old man has not been exaggerating and that the difference between the naughty boy whom he sent up to London in—­what was it? 1896?—­and the perfectly behaved, good sort of chap that you are now is no more than what usually happens when young men lose their cubbishness, why—­why—­do you take me?—­I ask myself whether the change had come about through some interference with the thyroid gland.  Do you understand?  And I thought, seeing how intensely interesting this research has become, you might have told me more about it.  Just what did happen to you; where you were wounded, who attended to you, what operation was performed on the throat—­only the rum thing is there seems to be no scar—­well:  now you help me out, that is unless you feel more inclined to say, ‘What the hell does it matter to you?’"...

David by this time has grown scarlet with embarrassment and confusion.  But he endeavoured to meet the situation.

“My character has changed during the last five years, and especially so since I came back from South Africa.  But I am quite sure it was not due to any operation, on the throat or anywhere else.  I really don’t know why I told you that silly falsehood in the train—­about necrosis of the jaw.  The fact is that when I was in hospital—­at—­Colesberg, a friend of mine in the same ward used—­to chaff me—­and say I was going to have necrosis.  I had got knocked over one day—­by—­the—­wind of a shell and thought I was done for, but it really was next to nothing.  P’raps I had a dose of fever on top.  At any rate they kept me in hospital, and one morning the doctors disappeared and the Boers marched in and when I got well enough I managed to escape and get away to—­er—­Cape Town and so returned—­with some money—­my friend Frank Gardner lent me.” (At this stage the sick-at-heart Vivie was saying to herself, “What an account I’m laying up for Frank to honour when he comes back—­if he does come back.”) “I don’t know why I tell you all this, except that I ought never to have misled you at the start.  But if you are a kind and good man”—­David’s voice broke here—­“You will forget all about it and not upset my father, I can assure you I haven’t done anything really wrong.  I haven’t deserted—­some day—­perhaps—­I can tell you all about it.  But at present all that South African episode is just a horrid dream—­I was more sinned against than sinning” (tears were rather in the voice at this stage).  “I want to forget all about it—­and settle down and vex my father no more.  I want to read for the Bar—­a soldier’s life is the very opposite to what I should choose if I were a free agent.  But you will trust me, won’t you?  You will believe me when I say I’ve done nothing wrong, nothing that you, if you knew all the facts, would call wrong...?”