He felt her disillusionment; felt with it and spread a feast of it.

She had to hear of studies at Caen and at a Paris Lycee; French fairly mastered; German, the same; Italian, the same; after studies at Heidelberg, Asti, and Florence; between four and five months at Athens (he was needlessly precise), in tutorship with a young nobleman: no events, nor a spot of colour.

Thus did he wilfully, with pain to himself, put an extinguisher on the youth painted brilliant and eminent in a maiden's imagination.
"So there can no longer be thought of the army," she remarked; and the remark had a sort of sigh, though her breathing was equable.
"Unless a big war knocks over all rules and the country comes praying us to serve," he said.
"You would not refuse then ?" "Not in case of need.

One may imagine a crisis when they would give commissions to men of my age or older for the cavalry--heavy losses of officers." She spoke, as if urged by a sting to revert to the distasteful: "That profession--must you not take...

enter into orders if you aim at any distinction ?" "And a member of the Anglican Church would not be allowed to exchange his frock for a cavalry sabre," said he.