Hall I saw young Cyril Clatworthy, one of the Intelligence crowd, surrounded by a group of girls who were stroking his tunic, clasping his hands, pushing each other laughingly to get nearer to him. He was in lively conversation with the prettiest girl whom he kept in front of him. It was obvious that he was enjoying himself as the central figure of this hero-worship, and as I passed the boy (twenty-four that birthday, he had told me a month before), I marvelled at his ceaseless capacity for amorous adventure, with or without a moment's notice. A pretty girl, if possible, or a plain one if not, drew him like a magnet, excited all his boyish egotism, called to the faun-spirit that played the pipes of Pan in his heart. It was an amusing game for him with his curly brown hair and Midshipman Easy type of face. For the French girls whom he had met on his way—little Marcelle on Cassel Hill, Christine at Corbie on the Somme, Marguérite in the hat-shop at Amiens (what became of her, poor kid?), it was not so amusing when he "blew away," as he called it, and had a look at life elsewhere.
He winked at me, as I passed, over the heads of the girls.
"The fruits of victory!" he called out. "There is a little Miss Brown-Eyes here who is quite enchanting."
It was rather caddish of me to say:
"Have you forgotten Marguérite Aubigny?"
He thought so too, and reddened, angrily.
"Go to blazes!" he said.
His greatest chum, and one of mine,—Charles Fortune—was standing outside a café in the big Place, not far from the Vieille Bourse with its richly-carved Renaissance front. Here there was a dense crowd, but they kept at a respectful distance from Fortune who, with his red tabs and red-and-blue arm-band and row of ribbons (all gained by heroic service over a blotting-pad in
