Presently, however, our peregrinations came to an end. Edgecumbe had appeared before a medical officer, and was declared fit for duty again. He had also received orders to return to his battery, while I daily waited instructions as to my future course of action.

'We have had a wonderful time, Luscombe,' he said. 'I little dreamt, when we started out to see London, what it would be like.'

'I am bewildered,' he replied; 'it is all too big to co-ordinate. I want to get a grasp of everything. I want to see things in their true proportion. I want to understand.'

We had just come from the Crystal Palace, where so many thousands of our sailors are quartered, and had been talking with the workers of the Y.M.C.A. concerning their activities there.

'You will never be able to co-ordinate it, Edgecumbe,' I said. 'No man can understand fully the life of a great city like this.'

'No, I suppose not. Still, I am trying to think my way through it.'

'Anyhow,' I said, 'you have to return to duty tomorrow. Let us forget the serious things of life for once. By the way,' I added, 'have you heard from Miss Lorna Bolivick?'

For some seconds he did not reply, and I thought he did not hear what I said. His face was a curious study at the time, and I wondered what he was thinking about.

'No,' he replied presently, 'I have not heard from her. Naturally I did not expect to.'

During the whole time we had spent in London together, he had never once referred to her, and I imagined, and almost hoped, that he had seen the madness of the determination he had expressed when we were down in Devonshire.

'You have given up all thought of her, then?'

'Given up all thought of her? Certainly not. You know what I told you?'

'Yes, but I thought you might have seen how foolish you were.'

'I shall never give up hope,' he replied; 'that is, until hope is impossible. Whatever made you think of such a thing?'

'But do you not see the madness of your plan?'

'No, there is nothing mad in it. By the way, Luscombe, I am awfully hungry. Let us go in here and get some dinner. Don't think, old man, that I can't see your point of view,' he said when we had taken our seats in the dining-room of the restaurant, 'I can. From your standpoint, for a man in my position, without name, without home, without friends, without money, to aspire to the hand of Lorna Bolivick, is to say that he is fit for a lunatic asylum. But I can't see things as you do. God Almighty didn't put this love in my heart for nothing, a love which has been growing every day since I saw her. Why, man, although I have said nothing to you, she is everything to me, everything! That is, from the personal standpoint. If I did not believe in God, I should despair, but, believing in Him, despair is impossible.'