Dastrey, in the last days of January, had been sent home from his ambulance with an attack of rheumatism; and when it became clear that he could no longer be of use in the mud and cold of the army zone he had reluctantly taken his place behind a desk at the Ministry of War. The friends had dined early, so that he might get back to his night-shift; and they sat over coffee and liqueurs, the mist of their cigars floating across lustrous cabinet-fronts and the worn gilding of slender consoles. On the other side of the hearth young Boylston, sunk in an armchair, smoked and listened. “It always comes back to the same thing,” Campton was saying nervously. “What right have useless old men like me, sitting here with my cigar by this good fire, to preach blood and butchery to boys like George and your nephew?” Again and again, during the days since Mrs. Brant’s visit, he had turned over in his mind the same torturing question.
