Lionel was the Senior Subaltern's name. A woman came into the little circle of light by the candles on the peg-tables, stretching out her hands to the dark where the Senior Subaltern was, and sobbing. We rose to our feet, feeling that things were going to happen and ready to believe the worst. Anything might turn up any day for any one. Perhaps the Senior Subaltern had been trapped in his youth.
Men are crippled that way occasionally.
She was tall, with a fine figure, and her voice had a running sob in it pitiful to hear. This did not sound quite like a lady's way of speaking. It was too demonstrative. Things seemed black indeed, and the Captains' wives peered under their eyebrows at the Senior Subaltern, and the Colonel's face set like the Day of Judgment framed in gray bristles, and no one spoke for a while. We trooped into the ante-room, under the full lights, and there we saw how beautiful the woman was.