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she lays for a while. We all got horrible memories of the war. I lose eighty-nine dollars in a crap game once, besides losing, as that wop writer says, that an’ which thou knowest at Chatter Teary. So how about a little whisky, men?”
    â€œCheer-o,” said the officer again.
    â€œWhat do you mean, Chateau Thierry?” said Lowe, boyish in disappointment, feeling that he had been deliberately ignored by one to whom Fate had been kinder than to himself.
    â€œYou talking about Chatter Teary?”
    â€œI’m talking about a place you were not at, anyway.”
    â€œI was there in spirit, sweetheart. That’s what counts.”
    â€œYou couldn’t have been there any other way. There ain’t any such place.”
    â€œHell there ain’t! Ask the Loot here if I ain’t right. How about it, Loot?”
    But he was asleep. They looked at his face, young, yet old as the world, beneath the dreadful scar. Even Gilligan’s levity left him. “My God, it makes you sick at the stomach, don’t it? I wonder if he knows how he looks? What do you reckon his folks will say when they see him? or his girl—if he has got one. And I’ll bet he has.”
    New York flew away: it became noon within, by clock, but the grey imminent horizon had not changed. Gilligan said: “If he has got a girl, know what she’ll say?”
    Cadet Lowe, knowing all the despair of abortive endeavour, asked, “What?”
    New York passed on and Mahon beneath his martial harness slept. (Would I sleep? thought Lowe; had I wings, boots, would I sleep?) His wings indicated by a graceful sweep pointed sharply down above a ribbon. White, purple, white, over his pocket, over his heart (supposedly), Lowe descried between the pinions of a superimposed crown and three letters, then his gaze mounted to the sleeping scarred face. “What?” he repeated.
    â€œShe’ll give him the air, buddy.”
    â€œAh, come in. Of course she won’t.”
    â€œYes, she will. You don’t know women. Once the new has wore off it’ll be some bird that stayed at home and made money, or some lad that wore shiny leggings and never got nowheres so he could get hurt, like you and me.”
    The porter came to hover over the sleeping man.
    â€œHe ain’t got sick, has he?” he whispered.
    They told him no; and the negro eased the position of the sleeping man’s head. “You gentlemen look after him and be sure to call me if he wants anything. He’s a sick man.”
    Gilligan and Lowe, looking at the officer, agreed, and the porter lowered the shade. “You want some more ginger ale?”
    â€œYes,” said Gilligan, assuming the porter’s hushed tone, and the negro withdrew. The two of them sat in silent comradeship, the comradeship of those whose lives had become pointless through the sheer equivocation of events, of the sorry jade, Circumstance. The porter brought ginger ale and they sat drinking while New York became Ohio.
    Gilligan, that talkative unserious one, entered some dream within himself and Cadet Lowe, young and dreadfully disappointed, knew all the old sorrows of the Jasons of the world who see their vessels sink ere the harbour is left behind. . . . Beneath his scar the officer slept in all the travesty of his wings and leather and brass, and a terrible old woman paused, saying:
    â€œWas he wounded?”
    Gilligan waked from his dream. “Look at his face,” he said fretfully: “he fell off of a chair on to an old woman he was talking to and done that.”
    â€œWhat insolence,” said the woman, glaring at Gilligan. “But can’t something be done for him? He looks sick to me.”
    â€œYes, ma’am. Something can be done for him. What we are doing now—letting him alone.”
    She and Gilligan stared at each other, then she looked at Cadet Lowe, young and belligerent and disappointed. She looked back to Gilligan.