"And you, Mr. Sisson," said Sir William, "mean to carry all before you by taking no thought for the morrow. Well, now, we can only wish you success."

"I don't want to carry all before me," said Aaron. "I should be sorry. I want to walk past most of it."

"Can you tell us where to? I am intrigued, as Sybil says, to know where you will walk to. Come now. Enlighten us."

"Nowhere, I suppose."

"But is that satisfactory? Can you find it satisfactory?"

"Is it even true?" said the Major. "Isn't it quite as positive an act to walk away from a situation as to walk towards it?"

"My dear boy, you can't merely walk away from a situation. Believe that.

If you walk away from Rome, you walk into the Maremma, or into the Alban Hills, or into the sea--but you walk into something. Now if I am going to walk away from Rome, I prefer to choose my direction, and therefore my destination."

"But you can't," said the Major.

"What can't you?"

"Choose. Either your direction or your destination." The Major was obstinate.

"Really!" said Sir William. "I have not found it so. I have not found it so. I have had to keep myself hard at work, all my life, choosing between this or that."

"And we," said the Major, "have no choice, except between this or nothing."

"Really! I am afraid," said Sir William, "I am afraid I am too old--or too young--which shall I say?--to understand."

"Too young, sir," said Arthur sweetly. "The child was always father to the man, I believe."

"I confess the Major makes me feel childish," said the old man. "The choice between this or nothing is a puzzler to me. Can you help me out, Mr. Sisson? What do you make of this this-or-nothing business? I can understand neck-or-nothing---"

"I prefer the NOTHING part of it to the THIS part of it," said Aaron, grinning.

"Colonel," said the old man, "throw a little light on this nothingness."

"No, Sir William," said the Colonel. "I am all right as I am."

"As a matter of fact, so are we all, perfectly A-one," said Arthur.

Aaron broke into a laugh.

"That's the top and bottom of it," he laughed, flushed with wine, and handsome. We're all as right as ninepence. Only it's rather nice to talk."

"There!" said Sir William. "We're all as right as ninepence! We're all as right ninepence. So there well leave it, before the Major has time to say he is twopence short." Laughing his strange old soundless laugh, Sir William rose and made a little bow. "Come up and join the ladies in a minute or two," he said. Arthur opened the door for him and he left the room.

The four men were silent for a moment--then the Colonel whipped up the decanter and filled his glass. Then he stood up and clinked glasses with Aaron, like a real old sport.

"Luck to you," he said.

"Thanks," said Aaron.

"You're going in the morning?" said Arthur.

"Yes," said Aaron.

"What train?" said Arthur.

"Eight-forty."

"Oh--then we shan't see you again. Well--best of luck."

"Best of luck--" echoed the Colonel.

"Same to you," said Aaron, and they all peered over their glasses and quite loved one another for a rosy minute.

"I should like to know, though," said the hollow-cheeked young Major with the black flap over his eye, "whether you do really mean you are all right--that it is all right with you--or whether you only say so to get away from the responsibility."

"I mean I don't really care--I don't a damn--let the devil take it all."

"The devil doesn't want it, either," said the Major.

"Then let him leave it. I don't care one single little curse about it all."

"Be damned. What is there to care about?" said the Colonel.

"Ay, what?" said Aaron.

"It's all the same, whether you care or don't care. So I say it's much easier not to care," said Arthur.

"Of course it is," said the Colonel gaily.

"And I think so, too," said Aaron.

"Right you are! We're all as right as ninepence--what? Good old sport!

Here's yours!" cried the Colonel.

"We shall have to be going up," said Arthur, wise in his generation.

As they went into the hall, Arthur suddenly put one arm round Aaron's waist, and one arm round the Colonel's, and the three did a sudden little barn-dance towards the stairs. Arthur was feeling himself quite let loose again, back in his old regimental mess.

Approaching the foot of the stairs, he let go again. He was in that rosy condition when united-we-stand. But unfortunately it is a complicated job to climb the stairs in unison. The whole lot tends to fall backwards. Arthur, therefore, rosy, plump, looking so good to eat, stood still a moment in order to find his own neatly-slippered feet. Having found them, he proceeded to put them carefully one before the other, and to his enchantment found that this procedure was carrying him magically up the stairs. The Colonel, like a drowning man, clutched feebly for the straw of the great stair-rail--and missed it. He would have gone under, but that Aaron's hand gripped his arm. So, orientating once more like a fragile tendril, he reached again for the banister rail, and got it.

After which, lifting his feet as if they were little packets of sand tied to his trouser buttons, he manipulated his way upwards. Aaron was in that pleasant state when he saw what everybody else was doing and was unconscious of what he did himself. Whilst tall, gaunt, erect, like a murdered Hamlet resurrected in khaki, with the terrible black shutter over his eye, the young Major came last.

Arthur was making a stern fight for his composure. His whole future depended on it. But do what he would, he could not get the flushed, pleased, mess-happy look off his face. The Colonel, oh, awful man, did a sort of plump roly-poly-cake-walk, like a fat boy, right to the very door of that santum-sanctorum, the library. Aaron was inwardly convulsed. Even the Major laughed.

But Arthur stiffened himself militarily and cleared his throat. All four started to compose themselves, like actors going on the stage, outside that library door. And then Arthur softly, almost wistfully, opened and held the door for the others to pass. The Colonel slunk meekly in, and sat in a chair in the background. The Major stalked in expressionless, and hovered towards the sofa where his wife sat.

There was a rather cold-water-down-your-back feeling in the library.

The ladies had been waiting for coffee. Sir William was waiting, too.