In his Eastern college days, as Neil learned from afar, Rod had been equally deft at debating and at polo, and while he sozzled with the rowdies he picked up in New York bars and took the oath of the Brother in Blood in pretzels and in salt, he seduced none but girls of families above or below the blackmail line, and said with the humorous clarity typical of him even in youth, “When I get ready to run for the Senate, there won’t be any little bastards on the platform.”

Rod lived not in the sweet neighborliness of Sylvan Park but next door to Dr. Roy Drover, in the grandeur of Ottawa Heights. He was now on terminal leave from the Army, a figure of romantic war, given to specially tailored battle-jackets. For his own welcome, the wide oaken floors of his large house had been waxed, his collection of crystal vases and bowls, new-washed and glittering, had been filled with daffodils, and behind a Chinese screen, liberated from the unlawful hands of German looters, a four-piece orchestra played Delius and Copland. It was the first warm summer-evening in that Northern land, and the men were out in white-flannel dinner jackets (and damn cold they were, too) and the flower of local womanhood were in white net with Mexican shawls.

Rod moved like a Candidate from admiring knot to knot, and to Neil and Vestal he said simply, “You two—now I know I’m home! Neilly, I’ve heard how gallantly you took your wound, and I heard it from some pretty high-ranking brass on the Other Side. I said to them, ‘He’s about my oldest friend, that boy, and am I proud of him!’”

Neil’s stomach burned with pride, and he was annoyed later to hear Dr. Drover speculate, “Looks to me like Rod is going in for popularity and politics when he gets out of the Army.”

Rod’s wife, Janet, was just a little taller than Vestal and a little better made-up and a little chattier about horse-shows, and Rod’s son and daughter were as cool and decorative as the wide house, and Neil felt that he was where he ought to be. When Rod could detach himself from circulating like a first secretary of embassy and exchange with Neil precious recollections of juvenile basketball and of beer in the highschool locker room, Neil decided that they were two gentlemen and officers and responsible men of affairs, standing together, shoulder to shoulder, for the higher ideals and enterprise of America.

The thought of Xavier Pic was but a ghost haunting a ghost, and Ash Davis was a fellow who worked in a laboratory.

* * * * *

Captain Kingsblood asked in a high manner of Major Aldwick, “Did you see any colored troops in action? Didn’t happen to, myself.”

“I certainly did! A black tank outfit brigaded with mine, and they were terrible: sullen and undisciplined and we had to keep pushing ‘em ahead of us into combat. There was a colored sergeant in that outfit that was an absolute Bolshevik. Instead of going through proper channels, he was always sneaking complaints to the general commanding, through crooked orderlies—endangering our whole morale with a lot of bellyaching about the Negroes being segregated in transportation and Red Cross supplies. If our staff could have managed it, there was one dusky gentleman that would never have come home to his hot mama in the sweet land of liberty!”