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Rh anything you did to myself only without very much effort, Dick." "I would not have had you forgive the other easily," said Dick sharply.

The long silence which followed was broken by Dick.

"I shall probably be married very soon if I can get permission from the Commissioner. Ducane has been dead eight months, and I am due for leave. I didn't take it when I enlisted four years ago."

"Ah! Then your term is up next year?"

"I know. But I shall join again if I am allowed. I can't settle to any other life now. I have knocked about too long."

"Is that—will that be fair on on"

"No!" Dick's laugh held a sting of bitterness. "Have I ever been fair to her or anyone else? But it is inevitable, and she recognises that. Do you remember what some poet says about Hercules? He fell into all sorts of evils if he didn't have the chance to sweat his soul out occasionally at honest hard work. Not that I compare myself to the god in any other way; but I do understand the common-sense of that. My nature will always be too strong for me if I can't find manual work enough to keep it down. She'll help—Jennifer will. But she can't do it all. It is part of the penalty, I suppose, that I shall never be able to settle down into a comfortable fat father and husband as you could. Oh—I never meant"

"It's all right. Don't imagine that that hurts now, Dick. I am not a child to spend my life crying over what I can't have. I think I would have been rather glad to to follow your example. I thought about it when I went East, and I—well, I tried. But I saw that, whoever the woman might be, she would take such a very third-class place behind my work and my country that it would have been dishonourable to ask her."

"You have more conscience than I have, Tempest."

"No. I have merely centred my interests where you have always wanted them to be—where I had thought I wanted them to be myself. A man can do little, perhaps. But the utmost which he can give will be asked of him. That is the great consolation."