Where are you?
Are you still alive?
If not, I shan't be long after you.

I'm getting old, my boy--and this world, as the devil has made it, is not meant for me.' He remained there for some time, his hands on his knees, staring into the bright face of his son.
Elizabeth too went to her room.

On her table lay the _Times_.

She took it up and read the telegrams again.

Raid and counter-raid all along the front--and in every letter and telegram the shudder of the nearing event, ghastly hints of that incredible battlefield to come, that hideous hurricane of death in which Europe was to see once more her noblest and her youngest perish.
'Oh, why, why am I a woman ?' she clasped her hands above her head in a passion of revolt.