Tietjens said to himself:
"What a monstrous absurdity this is of seeing and talking, for a minute or so! You meet and talk . . ." And next day at the same hour. Nothing. . . . As well not to meet or talk. . . . Yet the mere fantastic idea of seeing Valentine Wannop for a minute. . . . She not allowed in the camp and he not going out. Talking under a sentry's nose, very likely. . . . It had made him smell primroses. Primroses, like Miss Wannop. He said to the sergeant-major:
"What sort of a fellow is this?" Cowley, in open-mouthed suspense, gasped like a fish. Tietjens said:
"I suppose your mother is fairly feeble to stand in the cold?"
"A very decent man, sir," the sergeant-major got out, "one of the best. No trouble. A perfectly clean conduct sheet. Very good education. A railway engineer in civil life. . . . Volunteered, of course, sir."
"That's the odd thing," Tietjens said to the man, "that the percentages of absentees is as great amongst the volunteers as the Derby men or the compulsorily enlisted. . . . Do you understand what will happen to you if you miss the draft?"
The man said soberly:
"Yes, sir. Perfectly well."
"You understand that you will be shot? As certainly as that you stand there. And that you haven't a chance of escape."
He wondered what Valentine Wannop, hot pacifist, would think of him if she heard him. Yet it was his duty to talk like that: his human, not merely his military duty. As much his duty as that of a doctor to warn a man that if he drank of typhoid-contaminated water he would get typhoid. But people are unreason-
