So now what with Nelly's small portion, and his mother's two hundred and fifty a year in addition to his pay, the young subaltern thought himself almost rich--in comparison with so many others.

His father, who had died while he was still at school, had been a master at Harrow, and he had been brought up in a refined home, with high standards and ideals.

A scholarship at Oxford at one of the smaller colleges, a creditable degree, then an opening in the office of a well-known firm of solicitors, friends of his father, and a temporary commission, as soon as war broke out, on his record as a keen and diligent member of the Harrow and Oxford O.T.C.'s:--these had been the chief facts of his life up to August 1914;--that August which covered the roads leading to the Aldershot headquarters, day by day, with the ever-renewed columns of the army to be, with masses of marching men, whose eager eyes said one thing only--'_Training_!--_training_!' The war, and the causes of the war, had moved his nature, which was sincere and upright, profoundly; all the more perhaps because of a certain kindling and awakening of the whole man, which had come from his first sight of Nelly Cookson in the previous June, and from his growing friendship with her--which he must not yet call love.

He had decided however after three meetings with her that he would never marry anyone else.

Her softness, her yieldingness, her delicate beauty intoxicated him.