Victor went so far as to produce her picture, and Claude gazed without knowing what to say at a large moon-shaped face with heavy-lidded, weary eyes,—­the neck clasped by a pearl collar, the shoulders bare to the matronly swell of the bosom.  There was not a line or wrinkle in that smooth expanse of flesh, but from the heavy mouth and chin, from the very shape of the face, it was easy to see that she was quite old enough to be Victor’s mother.  Across the photograph was written in a large splashy hand, ’A mon aigle!’ Had Victor been delicate enough to leave him in any doubt, Claude would have preferred to believe that his relations with this lady were wholly of a filial nature.

“Women like her simply don’t exist in your part of the world,” the aviator murmured, as he snapped the photograph case.  “She’s a linguist and musician and all that.  With her, every-day living is a fine art.  Life, as she says, is what one makes it.  In itself, it’s nothing.  Where you came from it’s nothing—­a sleeping sickness.”

Claude laughed.  “I don’t know that I agree with you, but I like to hear you talk.”

“Well; in that part of France that’s all shot to pieces, you’ll find more life going on in the cellars than in your home town, wherever that is.  I’d rather be a stevedore in the London docks than a banker-king in one of your prairie States.  In London, if you’re lucky enough to have a shilling, you can get something for it.”

“Yes, things are pretty tame at home,” the other admitted.

“Tame?  My God, it’s death in life!  What’s left of men if you take all the fire out of them?  They’re afraid of everything.  I know them; Sunday-school sneaks, prowling around those little towns after dark!” Victor abruptly dismissed the subject.  “By the way, you’re pals with the doctor, aren’t you?  I’m needing some medicine that is somewhere in my lost trunk.  Would you mind asking him if he can put up this prescription?  I don’t want to go to him myself.  All these medicos blab, and he might report me.  I’ve been lucky dodging medical inspections.  You see, I don’t want to get held up anywhere.  Tell him it’s not for you, of course.”

When Claude presented the piece of blue paper to Doctor Trueman, he smiled contemptuously.  “I see; this has been filled by a London chemist.  No, we have nothing of this sort.”  He handed it back.  “Those things are only palliatives.  If your friend wants that, he needs treatment,—­and he knows where he can get it.”

Claude returned the slip of paper to Victor as they left the dining-room after supper, telling him he hadn’t been able to get any.

“Sorry,” said Victor, flushing haughtily.  “Thank you so much!”

VIII

Tod Fanning held out better than many of the stronger men; his vitality surprised the doctor.  The death list was steadily growing; and the worst of it was that patients died who were not very sick.  Vigorous, clean-blooded young fellows of nineteen and twenty turned over and died because they had lost their courage, because other people were dying,—­because death was in the air.  The corridors of the vessel had the smell of death about them.  Doctor Trueman said it was always so in an epidemic; patients died who, had they been isolated cases, would have recovered.