Wandesforde had heard as much as that. He did not dare offer sympathy, because Denis's glacial eye was upon him, forbidding it. Denis went on with his most intransigent air: "And I may add that if I get the ghost of a chance to go I'm goin', and if I get into a row for it afterwards I _do not care_. I want you to know this now because, if things fall out as I expect, I shall be very much obliged if you'll see my pal Gardiner next time you're home on leave, and tell him."
"Yes. Sorry to put you to so much inconvenience, but I can't write it, because his letters are read."
"Tell him I'm goin' to Rochehaut to look up Lettice. It's more his affair than mine." Wandesforde scribbled down the message in his pocket-book. "And tell him--" Denis's voice unexpectedly failed.
"Say I've changed my mind, and I'm goin' to settle up my own affair too, if I'm let. He'll understand."
Wandesforde did not, never having heard of Dorothea in this connection. He had never known Denis make a confidence before. There was a pause; but he still waited. If he knew anything of the signs of the times, more was coming. He was right. The never-ceasing thunder of the guns accompanied and illustrated Denis's next speech.
"Wandesforde, do you believe in a future life?"
Three months earlier, Wandesforde would have answered with a shrug. His point of view had changed. "More or less got to out here, haven't you?" he said soberly.
"I didn't--for the best part of this year."
"What, that time you were playing about with the fair Evey?"
Denis lifted his head. "You knew? Well, I suppose you would. It never struck me--"
"Everybody knew, old thing," said Wandesforde, with an irrepressible grin. He was more touched than he would have cared to admit by Denis's rather truculent confidences, but he could not for his life help finding him deuced funny! "And nobody could think what on earth you were after! It was so very much out of your line, and, if you'll forgive my saying so, you made such a shocking poor hand at it!"
"I don't lay claim to your experience," said Denis forbiddingly. He attacked his confessions once more. "I had rather a rough time of it last autumn, one way and another. I--it--I--"
"You lost your faith," suggested Wandesforde, still grinning. "Lord bless you, my dear chap, I know! You left off going to Bredon and listening to the little blighter with the mustachios. He came to me about it--funked you, I suppose--and I had to send him off with a flea in his ear. Oh, Denis, when you go off the rails all the world stands to admire. Nobody would make a song about it if I stopped going to church. And then Evey Byrne appeared on the scenes, and there was a hectic interlude which ended in your both vanishing. You went back to Bredon, I know that; but what on earth did you do with her?"