In the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through the course prescribed for surgeons in the Army. Having completed my studies there, I was duly attached to the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers as assistant surgeon. The regiment was stationed in India at the time, and before I could join it, the second Afghan war had broken out. On landing at Bombay, I learned that my corps had advanced through the passes, and was already deep in the enemy’s country. I followed, however, with many other officers who were in the same situation as myself, and succeeded in reaching Candahar in safety, where I found my regiment, and at once entered upon my new duties.

The campaign brought honours and promotion to many, but for me it had nothing but misfortune and disaster. I was removed from my brigade and attached to the Berkshires, with whom I served at the fatal battle of Maiwand. There I was struck on the shoulder by a Jezail bullet, which shattered the bone and grazed the subclavian artery. I should have fallen into the hands of the murderous Ghazis Ghazis had it not been for the devotion and courage shown by Murray, my orderly, who threw me across a packhorse, and succeeded in bringing me safely to the British lines.

Worn with pain, and weak from the prolonged hardships which I had undergone, I was removed, with a great train of wounded sufferers, to the base hospital at Peshawar. Here I rallied, and had already improved so far as to be able to walk about the wards, and even to bask a little upon the veranda when I was struck down by enteric fever, that curse of our Indian possessions. For months my life was despaired of, and when at last I came to myself and became convalescent, I was so weak and emaciated that a medical board determined that not a day should be lost in sending me back to England. I was despatched accordingly, in the troopship Orontes, and landed a month later on Portsmouth jetty, with my health irretrievably ruined, but with permission from a paternal government to spend the next nine months in attempting to improve it.

I had neither kith nor kin in England, and was therefore as free as air — or as free as an income of eleven shillings and sixpence a day will permit a man to be. Under such circumstances I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained. There I stayed for some time at a private hotel in the Strand, leading a comfortless, meaningless existence, and spending such money as I had, considerably more freely than I ought. So alarming did the state of my finances become, that I soon realized that I must either leave the metropolis and rusticate somewhere in the country, or that I must make a complete alteration in my style of living. Choosing the latter alternative, I began by making up my mind to leave the hotel, and take up my quarters in some less pretentious and less expensive domicile.

‘What’s the matter, really?’ said Gerald, turning to Gudrun.

This was an assumption of a sort of intimacy that irritated Gudrun almost like an affront. It seemed to her that Gerald was deliberately insulting her, and infringing on the decent privacy of them all.

‘What is it?’ she said, in her high, repellent voice. ‘Don’t ask me!—I know nothing about ULTIMATE marriage, I assure you: or even penultimate.’

‘Only the ordinary unwarrantable brand!’ replied Gerald. ‘Just so—same here. I am no expert on marriage, and degrees of ultimateness. It seems to be a bee that buzzes loudly in Rupert’s bonnet.’

‘Exactly! But that is his trouble, exactly! Instead of wanting a woman for herself, he wants his IDEAS fulfilled. Which, when it comes to actual practice, is not good enough.’

‘Oh no. Best go slap for what’s womanly in woman, like a bull at a gate.’ Then he seemed to glimmer in himself. ‘You think love is the ticket, do you?’ he asked.

‘Certainly, while it lasts—you only can’t insist on permanency,’ came Gudrun’s voice, strident above the noise.

‘Marriage or no marriage, ultimate or penultimate or just so–so?—take the love as you find it.’

‘As you please, or as you don’t please,’ she echoed. ‘Marriage is a social arrangement, I take it, and has nothing to do with the question of love.’

His eyes were flickering on her all the time. She felt as is he were kissing her freely and malevolently. It made the colour burn in her cheeks, but her heart was quite firm and unfailing.

‘You think Rupert is off his head a bit?’ Gerald asked.

Her eyes flashed with acknowledgment.

‘As regards a woman, yes,’ she said, ‘I do. There IS such a thing as two people being in love for the whole of their lives—perhaps. But marriage is neither here nor there, even then. If they are in love, well and good. If not—why break eggs about it!’

‘Yes,’ said Gerald. ‘That’s how it strikes me. But what about Rupert?’

‘I can’t make out—neither can he nor anybody. He seems to think that if you marry you can get through marriage into a third heaven, or something—all very vague.’

‘Very! And who wants a third heaven? As a matter of fact, Rupert has a great yearning to be SAFE—to tie himself to the mast.’

‘Yes. It seems to me he’s mistaken there too,’ said Gudrun. ‘I’m sure a mistress is more likely to be faithful than a wife—just because she is her OWN mistress. No—he says he believes that a man and wife can go further than any other two beings—but WHERE, is not explained. They can know each other, heavenly and hellish, but particularly hellish, so perfectly that they go beyond heaven and hell—into—there it all breaks down—into nowhere.’