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‘Why not?’ rather truculently.

‘Oh–oh, all right,’ sitting uncomfortably.

The cigar gets several more stabs.

‘I suppose you catch an early train to-morrow?’

‘The 5.20. I have flag-signalling at half-past six.’

‘Phew! Hours before I shall be up.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Well, you needn’t dwell on it, Roger.’

Indignantly. ‘I didn’t.’ He starts up. ‘Good-night, father.’

‘Good-night. Damn. Come back. My fault. Didn’t I say I wanted to have a chat with you?’

‘I thought we had had it.’

Gloomingly, ‘No such luck.’

There is another pause. A frightened ember in the fire makes an appeal to some one to say something. Mr. Torrance rises. It is now he who is casting eyes at the door. He sits again, ashamed of himself.

‘I like your uniform, Roger,’ he says pleasantly.

Roger wriggles. ‘Haven’t you made fun of me enough?’

Sharply, ‘I’m not making fun of you. Don’t you see I’m trying to tell you that I’m proud of you?’

Roger is at last aware of it, with a sinking. He appeals, ‘Good lord, father, you are not going to begin now.’

The father restrains himself.

‘Do you remember, Roger, my saying that I didn’t want you to smoke till you were twenty?’

‘Oh, it’s that, is it?’ Shutting his mouth tight, ‘I never promised.’

Almost with a shout, ‘It’s not that.’ Then kindly, ‘Have a cigar, my boy?’

‘Me?’

A rather shaky hand, passes him a cigar case. Roger selects from it and lights up nervously. He is now prepared for the worst.

‘Have you ever wondered, Roger, what sort of a fellow I am?’

Guardedly, ‘Often.’

Mr. Torrance casts all sense of decency to the winds; such is one of the effects of war.

‘I have often wondered what sort of fellow you are, Roger. We have both been at it on the sly. I suppose that is what makes a father and son so uncomfortable in each other’s presence.’

Roger is not yet prepared to meet him half-way, but he casts a line.

‘Do you feel the creeps when you are left alone with me?’

‘Mortally, Roger. My first instinct is to slip away.’

‘So is mine,’ with deep feeling.

‘You don’t say so!’ with such surprise that the father undoubtedly goes up a step in the son’s estimation. ‘I always seem to know what you are thinking, Roger.’

‘Do you? Same here.’

‘As a consequence it is better, it is right, it is only decent that you and I should be very chary of confidences with each other.’

Roger is relieved. ‘I’m dashed glad you see it in that way.’

‘Oh, quite. And yet, Roger, if you had to answer this question on oath, “Whom do you think you are most like in this world?” I don’t mean superficially, but deep down in your vitals, what would you say? Your mother, your uncle, one of your friends on the golf links?’

‘No.’

‘Who?’

Darkly, ‘You.’

‘Just how I feel.’

There is such true sympathy in the manly avowal that Roger cannot but be brought closer to his father.

‘It’s pretty ghastly, father.’

‘It is. I don’t know which it is worse for.’

They consider each other without bitterness.

‘You are a bit of a wag at times, Roger.’

‘You soon shut me up.’

‘I have heard that you sparkle more freely in my absence.’

‘They say the same about you.’

‘And now that you mention it, I believe it is true; and yet, isn’t it a bigger satisfaction to you to catch me relishing your jokes than any other person?’

Roger’s eyes open wide. ‘How did you know that?’

‘Because I am so bucked if I see you relishing mine.’

‘Are you?’ Roger’s hold on the certain things in life are slipping. ‘You don’t show it.’

‘That is because of our awkward relationship.’

Roger lapses into gloom. ‘We have got to go through with it.’

His father kicks the coals. ‘There’s no way out.’

‘No.’

‘We have, as it were, signed a compact, Roger, never to let on that we care for each other. As gentlemen we must stick to it.’

‘Yes. What are you getting at, father?’

‘There is a war on, Roger.’

‘That needn’t make any difference.’

‘Yes, it does. Roger, be ready; I hate to hit you without warning. I’m going to cast a grenade into the middle of you. It’s this, I’m fond of you, my boy.’