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The general said that it was one of the young cubs on his own staff getting a dressing down from his dad for spending too much money. The young devils would get amongst the girls--and the old ones too. There was no stopping it. The place was a hotbed of...He left the sentence unfinished. She would not believe the trouble it gave him...That hotel itself...The scandals...

He said she would excuse him if he took a little nap in one of the arm-chairs too far away to interfere with their business talk. He would have to be up half the night. He seemed to Sylvia a blazingly contemptible personage--too contemptible really for Father Consett to employ as an agent, in clearing the room...But the omen was given. She had to consider her position. It meant--or did it?--that she had to be at war with the heavenly powers!...She clenched her hands...

In passing by Tietjens in his chair the general boomed out the words:

'I got your chit of this morning, Tietjens I must say...'

Tietjens lumbered out of his chair and stood at attention, his leg-of-mutton hands stiffly on the seams of his breeches.

'It's pretty strong,' the general said, 'marking a charge-sheet sent down from my department: Case explained. We don't lay charges without due thought. And Lance-Corporal Berry is a particularly reliable N.C.O. I have difficulty enough to get them. Particularly after the late riots. It takes courage, I can tell you.'

'If,' Tietjens said, 'you would see fit, sir, to instruct the G.M.P. not to call Colonial troops damned conscripts, the trouble would be over...We're instructed to use special discretion, as officers, in dealing with troops from the Dominions. They are said to be very susceptible of insult...'

The general suddenly became a boiling pot from which fragments of sentences came away: damned insolence; court of inquiry; damned conscripts they were too. He calmed enough to say:

'They are conscripts, your men, aren't they? They give me more trouble...I should have thought that you would have wanted...'

Tietjens said:

'No, sir. I have not a man in my unit, as far as it's Canadian or British Columbian, that is not voluntarily enlisted...'

The general exploded to the effect that he was bringing the whole matter before the G.O.C.I.C.'s department. Campion could deal with it how he wished: it was beyond himself. He began to bluster away from them; stopped; directed a frigid bow to Sylvia who was not looking at him; shrugged his shoulders and stormed off.

It was difficult for Sylvia to get hold again of her thoughts in the smoking-room, for the evening was entirely pervaded with military effects that seemed to her the pranks of schoolboys. Indeed, after Cowley, who had by now quite a good skinful of liquor, had said to Tietjens:

'By Jove, I would not like to be you and a little bit on if old Blazes caught sight of you to-night,' she said to Tietjens with real wonder:

'You don't mean to say that a gaga old fool like that could have any possible influence over you...You!'

Tietjens said:

'Well, it's a troublesome business, all this...'

She said that it so appeared to be, for before he could finish his sentence an orderly was at his elbow extending, along with a pencil, a number of dilapidated papers. Tietjens looked rapidly through them, signing one after the other and saying intermittently:

'It's a trying time.' 'We're massing troops up the line as fast as we can go.' 'And with an endlessly changing personnel...' He gave a snort of exasperation and said to Cowley: 'That horrible little Pitkins has got a job as bombing instructor. He can't march the draft...Who the deuce am I to detail? Who the deuce is there?...You know all the little...' He stopped because the orderly could hear. A smart boy. Almost the only smart boy left him.

Cowley barged out of his seat and said he would telephone the mess to see who was there...Tietjens said to the boy:

'Sergeant-Major Morgan made out these returns of religions in the draft?'