James was in lugubrious mood, for the fire which the impudence of Kruger’s ultimatum had lit in him had been cold-watered by the poor success of the last month, and the exhortations to effort in The Times.  He didn’t know where it would end.  Soames sought to cheer him by the continual use of the word Buller.  But James couldn’t tell!  There was Colley—­and he got stuck on that hill, and this Ladysmith was down in a hollow, and altogether it looked to him a ‘pretty kettle of fish’; he thought they ought to be sending the sailors—­they were the chaps, they did a lot of good in the Crimea.  Soames shifted the ground of consolation.  Winifred had heard from Val that there had been a ‘rag’ and a bonfire on Guy Fawkes Day at Oxford, and that he had escaped detection by blacking his face.

“Ah!” James muttered, “he’s a clever little chap.”  But he shook his head shortly afterwards and remarked that he didn’t know what would become of him, and looking wistfully at his son, murmured on that Soames had never had a boy.  He would have liked a grandson of his own name.  And now—­well, there it was!

Soames flinched.  He had not expected such a challenge to disclose the secret in his heart.  And Emily, who saw him wince, said: 

“Nonsense, James; don’t talk like that!”

But James, not looking anyone in the face, muttered on.  There were Roger and Nicholas and Jolyon; they all had grandsons.  And Swithin and Timothy had never married.  He had done his best; but he would soon be gone now.  And, as though he had uttered words of profound consolation, he was silent, eating brains with a fork and a piece of bread, and swallowing the bread.

Soames excused himself directly after dinner.  It was not really cold, but he put on his fur coat, which served to fortify him against the fits of nervous shivering to which he had been subject all day.  Subconsciously, he knew that he looked better thus than in an ordinary black overcoat.  Then, feeling the morocco case flat against his heart, he sallied forth.  He was no smoker, but he lit a cigarette, and smoked it gingerly as he walked along.  He moved slowly down the Row towards Knightsbridge, timing himself to get to Chelsea at nine-fifteen.  What did she do with herself evening after evening in that little hole?  How mysterious women were!  One lived alongside and knew nothing of them.  What could she have seen in that fellow Bosinney to send her mad?  For there was madness after all in what she had done—­crazy moonstruck madness, in which all sense of values had been lost, and her life and his life ruined!  And for a moment he was filled with a sort of exaltation, as though he were a man read of in a story who, possessed by the Christian spirit, would restore to her all the prizes of existence, forgiving and forgetting, and becoming the godfather of her future.  Under a tree opposite Knightsbridge Barracks, where the moon-light struck down clear and white, he took out once more the morocco