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By Root 3879 0

dans l'enceinte des puits de ma campagne.'...Much to the satisfaction of the duchess, who knew all about prices...A triumph for Christopher was at that moment so exactly what Sylvia thought she did not want that she decided to tell the general that Christopher was a Socialist. That might well take him down a peg or two in the general's esteem...for the general's arm-patting admiration for Tietjens, the man who did not argue but acted over the price of coal, was as much as she could bear...But, thinking it over in the smoking-room after dinner, by which time she was a good deal more aware of what she did want, she was not so certain that she had done what she wanted...Indeed, even in the octagonal room during the economical festivities that followed the signatures, she had been far from certain that she had not done almost exactly what she did not want...

It had begun with the general's exclaiming to her:

'You know your man's the most unaccountable fellow...He wears the damn-shabbiest uniform of any officer I ever have to talk to. He's said to be unholily hard up...I even heard he had a cheque sent back to the club...Then he goes and makes a princely gift like that--just to get Levin out of ten minutes' awkwardness...I wish to goodness I could understand the fellow...He's got a positive genius for getting all sorts of things out of the most beastly muddles...Why, he's even been useful to me...And then he's got a positive genius for getting into the most disgusting messes...You're too young to have heard of Dreyfus...But I always say that Christopher is a regular Dreyfus...I shouldn't be astonished if he didn't end by being drummed out of the army...which heaven forfend!'

It had been then that Sylvia had said:

'Hasn't it ever occurred to you that Christopher was a Socialist?'

For the first time in her life Sylvia saw her husband's godfather look grotesque...His jaw dropped down, his white hair became disarrayed, and he dropped his pretty cap with all the gold oakleaves and the scarlet. When he rose from picking it up his thin old face was purple and distorted. She wished she hadn't said it: she wished she hadn't said it. He exclaimed:

'Christopher!...A So...' He gasped as if he could not pronounce the word. He said: 'Damn it all!...I've loved that boy...He's my only godson...His father was my best friend...I've watched over him...I'd have married his mother if she would have had me...Damn it all, he's down in my will as residuary legatee after a few small things left to my sister and my collection of horns to the regiment I commanded...'

Sylvia--they were sitting on the sofa the duchess had left--patted him on the forearm and said:

'But general...godfather...'

'It explains everything,' he said with a mortification that was painful. His white moustache drooped and trembled. 'And what makes it all the worse--he's never had the courage to tell me his opinions.' He stopped, snorted and exclaimed: 'By God, I will have him drummed out of the service...By God, I will. I can do that much...'

His grief so shut him in on himself that she could say nothing to him...

'You tell me he seduced the little Wannop girl...The last person in the world he should have seduced...Ain't there millions of other women?...He got you sold up, didn't he?...Along with keeping a girl in a tobacco-shop...By jove, I almost lent him...offered to lend him money on that occasion...You can forgive a young man for going wrong with women...We all do...We've all set up girls in tobacco-shops in our time...But, damn it all, if the fellow's a Socialist it puts a different complexion...I could forgive him even for the little Wannop girl, if he wasn't...But...Good God, isn't it just the thing that a dirty-minded Socialist would do?...To seduce the daughter of his father's oldest friend, next to me...Or perhaps Wannop was an older friend than me...'

He had calmed himself a little--and he was not such a fool. He looked at her now with a certain keenness in his blue eyes that showed no sign of age. He said:

'See here, Sylvia...You aren't on terms with Christopher