Boylan and Peter sat together in the ante-room of headquarters. They did not speak. Peter was getting down to the quick. He thought many things which a man never tells another man, and seldom tells a woman; yet they were matters of truth and reason, no sentiment about them. He recalled many incidents of early years in which his mother had tried to teach him sensitiveness and mercy. Until now her effort seemed to have been wasted. It had been more simple and appealing to him to follow his father's picture of manhood. Possibly his mother had wearied of pitting her will against his. He had grown up under his father's control and ideal. As it looked to him now, he had become all that was obvious and average and easy; while his mother's passion had been for him to become one of the singular and precious and elect.... He would never have seen this so clearly had it not been for Berthe Wyndham. She had given him a kind of new birth, taken up the work wherein his mother had failed....  
Dabnitz came in. The young staff-officer was handsome, soldierly, black-eyed. His manner was one of enfolding cheerfulness. He had proved fair and , in his tastes and delicate in his of humor and natural effects. He could express himself fluently in Russian, German, English and French, but was a caste-man to the core, a militarist and . As such he proved rather to Peter Mowbray on this day.
 
“Is General Kohlvihr out with the fronts?” Boylan asked.
 
“He's in the field, but not at the front. We got the point yesterday, you see. I'd rather be in the van every day than left to these matters of clean-up—”
 
Peter looked up at him. “Is there much of this to do?”
 
“I'm afraid so. They work among the hospitals. You don't catch many of them in the ranks—”
 
“Perhaps they would rather tend the wounded than to make the wounds.”
 
Dabnitz smiled cheerfully. “They're afraid of their hides. When a man does a lot of talking, he is generally shy on action—”
 
Peter saw the ease of the acceptance of this view on the part of the others; saw how clearly it was the view of the military man.
 
“And yet it was a clean-cut death of that talker and his two companions you just executed—”
 
“An exception now and then,” Dabnitz granted.
 
“How do you catch them?”
 
“We have a system at work for that purpose—everywhere, especially in the hospitals. There isn't much when we get them.”
 
Peter Mowbray's prickled with heat and his face was cold with sweat.
 
“What do they preach?” he managed to ask.
 
“Sometimes for men to rise and go home; sometimes for them to cease to kill, and sometimes to shoot down the officers. It isn't all that a man has to do now to lead his men forward,” Dabnitz observed. “He must do that, of course, but all the danger isn't in front. It doesn't follow that a man has turned his back upon the enemy nowadays—if he happens to be found with a wound in the back.”
 
“Were these—these that you put out this morning—working in the hospitals?”
 
“Yes.”
 
Peter turned away.
 
“In a good many cases we bring a man to his feet again from a bad wound—to find him not a soldier but a damned .”
 
“It's expensive and also to carry such a hospital system afield,” Peter observed.
 
Dabnitz did not catch the . “Yes, it would be cheaper and simpler to put a hard-hit soldier out of his misery—”
 
Boylan, watching Peter's face, suddenly arose, suggesting that they ride out toward the fighting. ....When they were alone, he added:
 
“I know you don't want the front to-day, but it was very clear that I'd better get you out of there....Peter, did you ever kill a man?”
 
“No.” The question did not seem wild to either of them—there by the open court of Judenbach.
 
“I knew a man who did. I saw him getting whiter and whiter like your face—and looking into his victim's eyes in that queer surprised way you looked at Dabnitz. It wasn't in the field; in a city bar-room. I didn't look for what happened—but I knew something was coming. The fool went on talking, talking. The other ............