He was never to see her again, so what the hell did it matter?…Disgust, probably!…He remembered that he had not looked to see how Mackenzie was getting on in the noise. He did not want to see Mackenzie. He was a bore…How would her face express disgust? He had never seen her express disgust. She had a perfectly undistinguished face. Fair…0 God, how suddenly his bowels turned over!…Thinking of the girl…The face below him grinned at the roof—the half face! The nose was there, half the mouth with the teeth showing in the firelight…It was extraordinary how defined the peaked nose and the serrated teeth were in that mess…The eye looked jauntily at the peak of the canvas hut-roof…Gone with a grin. Singular the fellow should have spoken! After he was dead. He must have been dead when he spoke. It had been done with the last air automatically going out of the lungs. A reflex action, probably, in the dead…If he, Tietjens, had given the fellow the leave he wanted he would be alive now!

Well, he was quite right not to have given the poor devil his leave. He was, anyhow, better where he was. And so was he, Tietjens. He had not had a single letter from home since he had been out this time! Not a single letter. Not even gossip. Not a bill. Some circulars of old furniture dealers. They never neglected him! They had got beyond the sentimental stage at home. Obviously so…He wondered if his bowels would turn over again if he thought of the girl. He was gratified that they had. It showed that he had strong feelings…He thought about her deliberately. Hard. Nothing happened. He thought of her fair, undistinguished, fresh face that made your heart miss a beat when you thought about it. His heart missed a beat. Obedient heart! Like the first primrose. Not any primrose. The first primrose. Under a bank with the hounds breaking through the underwood…It was sentimental to say Du bist wie eine Blume Damn the German language! But that fellow was a Jew…One should not say that one’s young woman was like a flower, any flower. Not even to oneself. That was sentimental. But one might say one special flower.