Shem laughed.

‘You’ve got quite a lot o’ sense for a kid, you know, Martlow; but a man wouldn’t want to ask so many questions.’

Martlow grunted resentfully.

‘Some o’ these mademoiselles are too bloody artful for anyone. You want to watch your step wi’ ’em, I can tell you.’

The battalion was to move from Bruay at two o’clock, and about midday Bourne went to find Corporal Greenstreet at his billet. He wanted the corporal to pay Madame and the girl for their services. He had an absurd scruple about doing it himself. Altogether the corporals had given him a hundred and twenty francs, and their expenses, with some extra wine the night before, had been just under ninety.

‘Give her the bloody lot,’ said the corporal; ‘she did us all well.’

‘You give it to her,’ said Bourne; ‘give her twenty, and give the girl ten.’

‘It’s all in the family,’ said the corporal.

‘Yes, but some families like to be considered as a group of individuals,’ said Bourne, ‘and the individuals like to be distinguished separately.’

He sent the corporal in by himself, and waited until he returned.

‘That’s all right,’ said Corporal Greenstreet, with the air of a man who has brought a difficult business to a successful issue. ‘I believe you’re a bit sweet on that girl, Bourne.’

‘How did you get on with your cook-house-keeper?’ Bourne asked him irrelevantly, and Greenstreet’s ruddy face became scarlet.

‘She never said nothin’ more,’ he stammered precipitately. ‘She give me a cup o’ coffee that night, an’ Mademoiselle come out an’ said a few kin’ words. It were bloody funny, weren’t it?’

‘It’s funnier when you look back on it than when you’re in the middle of it,’ said Bourne drily. ‘It’s curious how events seem to change their character when one looks back on them.’

‘’e ’as gone potty,’ said the corporal to himself, as he walked away and Bourne turned to go into the house.

When Bourne entered the kitchen, the girl took up a basket, and went into the garden. Madame looked from her to the corporal a little anxiously.

‘Je viens faire mes adieux, madame,’ he said, ignoring the girl’s flight, and he thanked her warmly on behalf of himself and of the corporals. He hoped that they had not caused her any inconvenience. She was perfectly satisfied, but when he asked if he might go and say good-bye to mademoiselle, she looked at him again with that expression of droll despair which she had shown when interrupting them yesterday. Then she decided the question once and for all.

‘Thérèse!’ she called from the doorway, and when the girl came reluctantly, she added: ‘Monsieur veut faire ses adieux.’

And they said good-bye, with that slight air of formality which Madame’s presence imposed on them, their eyes searching through it to try and read each other’s thought, and each warding off the other. Madame might have her suspicions, but she evidently could restrain an unprofitable curiosity; and part of their secret was even a secret to themselves. In all action a man seeks to realize himself, and the act once complete, it is no longer a part of him, it escapes from his control and has an independent objective existence. It is the fruit of his marriage to a moment, but it is not the divine moment itself, nor even the meaning which the moment held for him, for that too has flown feather-footed down the wind. Bourne had a positive hatred of the excuse that ‘it does not matter’ being given as a reason for any action: if something does not matter, why do it? It does matter. It matters enormously, but not necessarily to others, and the reasons why it matters to you are probably inexplicable even to yourself. One need not confuse them with the consequences which one has to shoulder as a result, and one cannot shift the burden with a whimper for sympathy.