“Bah!” said the battalion-commander a trifle fatuously, “_moi, je suis connaisseur dans ces affaires-lá!_ I am sure that something is going to happen between you and that woman. I can always feel that sort of thing in the air like--” he hesitated for an illustration, “like some people can see ghosts.”
“_Mon Commandant_,” he said, curtly, “if you could see ghosts you would not feel so sure.”
There was a moment of unpleasant silence. The captain broke it by shouting for the orderlies.
The three officers were introduced to their rooms and parted to perform their toilet before dinner.
The meal which followed in the rather overfurnished Speisezimmer was overshadowed by the gloomy taciturnity of the doctor who appeared still to resent the battalion-commander’s suggestions of gallantry. Not all the sprightly sallies of the adjutant, not the persistent _bonhomie_ of the battalion-commander, resolutely ignoring any hostility between himself and the doctor, could bring a smile into that hard-set face with the sombre eyes. Their hostess did not appear again and was not mentioned between them. When they had finished, the captain suggested that they should smoke their cigars in the Salon.
“I feel I want to put my feet on the piano,” he said, with a vague remembrance of a popular picture, “like the _boches_ at Versailles in ’seventy! To infect our hostess’s curtains with cigar-smoke is a poor compromise, but it is something! _Allons, messieurs!_--let us indulge in hideous reprisals! The _boche_ has devastated our homes--let us avenge ourselves by spoiling his curtains!”
The battalion-commander looked smilingly across to the doctor.
“_Mon cher Delassus_, are you for this policy of reprisals?”
The doctor looked up as though startled out of a train of thought.
“_Mon commandant_, it is a subject on which I dare not let myself think.”
There was something so harsh in his tone that neither of his companions could continue their banter. Both looked at the doctor. They knew little or nothing of his private life, for he had joined the battalion only just prior to the armistice, but evidently it contained a tragedy the memory of which they had unwittingly revived. Both maintained a respectful silence for a few moments. Then the adjutant rose and went out of the room. He called out to them from the Salon that a splendid fire awaited them, and the others rose from the table also.