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The lunatic exclaimed:

"Campion, my uncle? Why, he's yours!"

Tietjens said:

"Oh, no, he isn't." The general was not even a connection of his, but he did happen to be Tietjen's godfather and his father's oldest friend.

The other fellow answered:

"Then it's damn funny. Damn suspicious.... Why should he be interested in you if he's not your filthy uncle? You're no soldier.... You're no sort of a soldier.... A meal-sack, that's what you look like...." He paused and then went on very quickly: "They say up at H.Q. that your wife has got hold of the disgusting general. I didn't believe it was true. I didn't believe you were that sort of fellow. I've heard a lot about you!"

Tietjens laughed at this madness. Then, in the dark brownness, an intolerable pang went all through his heavy frame—the intolerable pang of home news to these desperately occupied men, the pain caused by disasters happening in the darkness and at a distance. You could do nothing to mitigate them!... The extraordinary beauty of the wife from whom he was separated—for she was extraordinarily beautiful!—might well have caused scandals about her to have penetrated to the general's headquarters, which was a sort of family party! Hitherto there had, by the grace of God, been no scandals. Sylvia Tietjens had been excruciatingly unfaithful, in the most painful manner. He could not be certain that the child he adored was his own.... That was not unusual with extraordinarily beautiful—and cruel!—women. But she had been haughtily circumspect.