“What are you looking munitions-of-war at, General, down the innocent little Thames River?  You must be seeing around corners, past Wargrave, as far as Henley.”

“I didn’t see the Thames River,” he shot at me in his masterful way.  “I was looking at things past, and people dead and gone.  We ancients do that.  I saw London streets and crowds; I read the posters which told that Kitchener was drowned at sea, and then I saw, a year later, England in panic; I saw an almighty meeting in Trafalgar Square and I heard speeches which burned my ears—­men urging Englishmen to surrender England and make terms with the Huns.  Good God!” His fist came down on the rattling little iron table.

“My blood boils now when I remember.  Child,” he demanded, “I can’t see why your alluring ways should have set me talking.  Fancy, I’ve never told this tale but twice, and I’m holding forth to a little alien whom I haven’t known two days, a young ne’er-do-well not born till forty years after the tale happened!”

“What difference does that make?” I asked.  “Age means nothing to real people.  And we’ve known each other since—­since we hunted pterodactyls together, pre-historically.  Only—­I hate bats,” I objected to my own arrangement.  I went on:  “If you knew how I want to hear!  It’s the most wonderful thing in my life, this afternoon—­you.”

“I know you are honest,” he said.  “Different from the ruck.  I knew that the moment I saw you.”

“Then,” I prodded, “do begin with the posters about Lord Kitchener.”

“But that’s not the beginning,” he protested.  “You’ll spoil it all,” he said.

“Oh, no, then!  Begin at the beginning.  I didn’t know.  I wanted to get you started.”

The gray eyes dreamed down the placid river water.

“The beginning was before I was born.  It began when Kitchener, a young general, picked up a marauding party of black rascals on his way to Khartoum.  They had a captive, a white girl, a lady.  They had murdered her father and mother and young brother.  The father was newly appointed Colonel of a regiment, traveling to his post with his family.  The Arabs were saving the girl for their devilish head chieftain.  Kitchener had the lot executed, and sent for the girl.  She was—­”

The old man’s hand lifted to his head and he took off his hat and laid it on the ground.

“I cannot speak of that girl without uncovering,” he said, quietly.  “She was my mother.”  There was an electrical silence.  I knew enough to know that no words fitted here.  The old officer went on:  “She was one of the wonderful people.  What she seemed to think of, after the horrors she had gone through, was not herself or her suffering, but only to show her gratitude.  It was a long journey—­weeks—­through that land of hell, while she was in Kitchener’s hands, and not once did she lose courage.  The Sirdar told me that it was having an angel in camp—­she held that rough soldiery in the hollow of her hand.  She told Kitchener her story, and after that she would not talk of herself.  You’ve heard that he never had a love affair?  That’s wrong.  He was in love then, and for the rest of his life, with my mother.”