After tea, Bourne told Shem he was going to ask Sergeant Tozer to come to their supper; and he set off to A Company’s billets. The sergeant was not there when he arrived, so he waited, talking to Pritchard and Minton. Conversation with them was inclined to become monosyllabic at the best of times; for, to them, speech was either an integral part of action, as it is to the dramatist for instance, or it was an imperfect means of ventilating their grievances. At the present moment they were inactive, and they had no grievance, except against war, which had become too much a part of the natural order of things to be worth discussing. So Bourne leaned against the door-post and waited. He saw Miller crossing the yard, and looked curiously at that degenerate face. It had in it a cunning which might or might not be insane. He gave Bourne a meaningless grin, and went into one of the stables. Minton and Pritchard glanced at him as he passed.

‘They ought to ’ave shot that bugger,’ said Minton, indifferently. ‘’e’s either a bloody spy or a bloody coward, an’ ’e’s no good to us either way.’

The indifference of this judgment was its remarkable feature. Bourne found himself contrasting Miller with Weeper Smart, for no one could have had a greater horror and dread of war than Weeper had. It was a continuous misery to him, and yet he endured it. Living with him, one felt instinctively that in any emergency he would not let one down, that he had in him, curiously enough, an heroic strain. Martlow, who had been brought up to read people’s characters, said of him that he would be just as bloody miserable in peace time; and perhaps he was right. Bourne, contrasting the two men, had almost decided that Weeper’s defect lay in being too imaginative, when it flashed on his mind that while his imagination tortured him with apprehensions, it was actually his strength. Yes: it was Weeper’s imagination, not his will, which kept him going. Bourne did not know whether Madeley’s or Glazier’s tenacity ought to be described as will, but he was quite certain they had more will than Weeper had. They had less imagination, though they were, not devoid of it. Miller might be one of those people whose emotional instability was not far from madness. Perhaps he was not a coward at all, and the men may have been right in their earlier judgment that he was a spy; though it was possible that he might be an English, and not a German spy; and then, quite suddenly, from amusing his mind with the puzzle presented to it by Miller’s character, Bourne found himself probing anxiously into his own. It was only for a moment. As soon as one touched the fringe of the mystery which is oneself, too many unknown possibilities confronted one, everything seemed insecure and unstable. He turned away from it, with a restless impatience. He would not wait for Sergeant Tozer any longer; and turning out of the yard he came face to face with him. He refused Bourne’s invitation.