Now the adjutant loved his carbines.  They were to him as his grandchildren, the men standing in the first place.  He grunted rebelliously:  ’I can understand an Afghan stealing, because he’s built that way.  But I can’t understand his crying.  That makes it worse.’

The brandy must have affected Dirkovitch, for he lay back in his chair and stared at the ceiling.  There was nothing special in the ceiling beyond a shadow as of a huge black coffin.  Owing to some peculiarity in the construction of the mess-room this shadow was always thrown when the candles were lighted.  It never disturbed the digestion of the White Hussars.  They were in fact rather proud of it.

‘Is he going to cry all night?’ said the colonel, ’or are we supposed to sit up with little Mildred’s guest until he feels better?’

The man in the chair threw up his head and stared at the mess.  ’Oh, my God!’ he said, and every soul in the mess rose to his feet.  Then the Lushkar captain did a deed for which he ought to have been given the Victoria Cross—­distinguished gallantry in a fight against overwhelming curiosity.  He picked up his team with his eyes as the hostess picks up the ladies at the opportune moment, and pausing only by the colonel’s chair to say, ‘This isn’t our affair, you know, sir,’ led them into the verandah and the gardens.  Hira Singh was the last to go, and he looked at Dirkovitch.  But Dirkovitch had departed into a brandy-paradise of his own.  His lips moved without sound and he was studying the coffin on the ceiling.

‘White—­white all over,’ said Basset-Holmer, the adjutant.  ’What a pernicious renegade he must be!  I wonder where he came from?’

The colonel shook the man gently by the arm, and ‘Who are you?’ said he.

There was no answer.  The man stared round the mess-room and smiled in the colonel’s face.  Little Mildred, who was always more of a woman than a man till ‘Boot and saddle’ was sounded, repeated the question in a voice that would have drawn confidences from a geyser.  The man only smiled.  Dirkovitch at the far end of the table slid gently from his chair to the floor.

No son of Adam in this present imperfect world can mix the Hussars’ champagne with the Hussars’ brandy by five and eight glasses of each without remembering the pit whence he was digged and descending thither.  The band began to play the tune with which the White Hussars from the date of their formation have concluded all their functions.  They would sooner be disbanded than abandon that tune; it is a part of their system.  The man straightened himself in his chair and drummed on the table with his fingers.

‘I don’t see why we should entertain lunatics,’ said the colonel.  ’Call a guard and send him off to the cells.  We’ll look into the business in the morning.  Give him a glass of wine first though.’