But whatever it was, I was ready for it, for my whole being had found a new purpose.

Living in the trenches, you are apt to get your horizon narrowed down to the front line of enemy barbed wire on one side and the nearest rest billets on the other.

But now I seemed to see beyond the fog to a happy country.
High-pitched voices greeted my ears as I came down the broad staircase, voices which scarcely accorded with the panelled walls and the austere family portraits; and when I found my hostesses in the hall I thought their looks still less in keeping with the house.

Both ladies were on the wrong side of forty, but their dress was that of young girls.

Miss Doria Wymondham was tall and thin with a mass of nondescript pale hair confined by a black velvet fillet.