Desmond told him he was to tell me, if he was killed--that he'd "had a splendid life"-- and lived it "_all out_." "She's not to think of it as cut short.

I've had it _all_.

One lives here a year in a day." And he'd only been seven weeks at the front! He said it was the things he'd seen--not the horrible things--but the glorious things that made him feel like that.

Now he did believe there was a God--and I must believe it too.' The tears ran down her face.

Arthur held the quivering hands close in his; and through his soldier's mind, alive with the latest and innermost knowledge of the war, there flashed a terrible pre-vision of the weeks to come, the weeks of the great offensive, the storm of which might break any day--was certain, indeed, to break soon, and would leave behind it, trampled like leaves into a mire of blood, thousands of lives like Desmond's--Britain's best and rarest.
* * * * * An hour later the hall was deserted, except for Elizabeth, who, after seeing Pamela to bed, came down to write some household letters by the only fire.