“A bit demoralising—­at midday,” Lance murmured without conviction.

“Well, I am demoralised; dead—­damned—­done for.  I’m about to be honoured with a blooming medical certificate to that effect.  As a soldier, I’m extinct—­from this time forth for evermore.  You see before you the wraith of a Might-Have-Been.  After that gold-medal exhibition of inanity, kindly produce said pegs!”

Lance Desmond listened with a grave smile, and a sharp contraction of heart, to the absurdities of this first-best friend, who for three years had shared with him the high and horrible and ludicrous vicissitudes of war.  He knew only too well that trick of talking at random to drown some inner stress.  With every word of nonsense he uttered, Roy was implicitly confessing how acutely he felt the blow; and to parade his own bitter disappointment seemed an egotistical superfluity.  So he merely remarked with due gravity:  “I admit you’ve made out an overwhelming case for ’said pegs’!” And he shouted his orders accordingly.

They filled their tumblers in silence, avoiding each other’s eyes.  Every moment emphasised increasingly all that the detested verdict implied.  No more polo together.  No more sharing of books and jokes and enthusiasms and violent antipathies, to which both were prone.  No more ‘shoots’ in the Hills beyond Kashmir.

From the first of these they had lately returned—­sick leave, in Roy’s case; and the programme was to be repeated next April, if they could ‘wangle’ first leave.  Each knew the other was thinking of these things.  But they seemed entirely occupied in quenching their thirst, and their disappointment, in deep draughts of sizzling ice-cool whisky-and-soda.  Moreover—­ignominious, but true—­when the tumblers were emptied, things did begin to look a shade less blue.  It became more possible to discuss plans.  And Desmond was feeling distinctly anxious on that score.

“You won’t be shunted instanter,” he remarked; and Roy smiled at the relief in his tone.

“Next month, I suppose.  We must make the most of these few weeks, old man.”

“And then—­what?...  Home?”

Roy did not answer at once.  He was lying back again, staring out at the respectable imitation of a lawn, at rose beds, carpeted with over-blown mignonette, and a lone untidy tamarisk that flung a spiky shadow on the grass.  And the eye of his mind was picturing the loveliest lawn of his acquaintance, with its noble twin beeches and a hammock slung between—­an empty casket; the jewel gone.  It was picturing the drawing-room; the restful simplicity of its cream and gold:  but no dear and lovely figure, in gold-flecked sari, lost in the great arm-chair.  Her window-seat in the studio—­empty.  No one in a ‘mother-o’-pearl mood’ to come and tuck him up and exchange confidences, the last thing.  His father, also invalided out; his left coat sleeve half empty, where the forearm had been removed.