ater, Private Hibben was to recall with astonishment how in that same pinpoint of time the author of his undoing had registered with perfect. clarity and completely. . . the blue denims, the close-cropped thatch of brown hair, the arrogant yet somehow teasing laughter in blue eyes. It was incredible!

"Blast you!" roared Sergeant-Major, then repressed the flood of billingsgate that would have followed as he became conscious of the giggling, gawking civilians. He stared off at the two receding figures.

"Jeezus!" and the non-com spat. "Like you'd never seen a pair of poufs before!" Contemptuously he whipped about and hurried off after the brigadier. Within minutes Pvt. Hibbin was relieved of duty.

"Cheer up, chum!" the booming voice with its North Country accents. eddied through the barracks-room. "After all they can't give you the firing squad!" Lance-Corporal Jeffreys was bearing down on him.

Hibben acknowledge his presence with a melancholy grimace. "You've heard about it!"

"Couldn't help hearing," laughed Jeffreys, "everyone between Chelsea and the Tower has heard. Sergeant-Major has his wind up.'

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The levity fell leaden-weighted. "Why . . . why..." Hibben groaned, "why did I do it?"

It was a rhetorical question but the lance-corporal was a literalist. "All the fault of reflexes," he whispered, inclining his head over the figure on the cot. "You must have learned about them when you were a nipper in school." He didn't wait for an answer but continued. . . yet only a very few words were necessary. Only a few words, for, to his own amazement, the private realized that the explanation and more important, the implications behind it had been known to him; known to him for years and years. Only now had some selfimposed refusal to recognize been dispelled.

"There's a deal of truth in reflexes," Jeffreys was concluding with all the authority of a university don, “reflexes won't be denied. Not by Church or Act of Parliament. Not by you either!”

Once again he was laughing. "You'll be the talk of the table at the Granby tonight. It won't be Watts' show at all!"

"Come off it!" jeered the lance-corporal. "It'll be twenty-four hours before the bad news comes down through Regiment to Company. Til then you're a free man!"

Private Hibben gave his friend an answering grin of acknowledgement. Yes... tonight there would be the party. And tomorrow?

Tomorrow, he reflected, would bring Company punishment. Well-let them pile on any bloody punishment they wanted! The world about him would probably mete out worse in future. It was the price of non-conformity. But he could face it, for at last those fragments of tortuous thought, the disconnected memories, the puzzling speculations were assembling themselves. They would become a unity, the unity of self. He would know that self and knowing, would dare to be Kenneth Hibben.

Illustrations by Diana Bolton-Tremway, London