Her own mood was tuned thereby to an ever higher and more tragic key.

Nobody indeed of the party was the least tragic.
Everybody walked, fished, flirted, and laughed from morning till night.

Yet every newspaper, every post, brought news of some death that affected one or other of the large group; and amid all the sheer physical joy of the long days in the open, bathed in sun and wind, there was a sense in all of them--or almost all of them--that no summer now is as the summers of the past, that behind and around the laughter and the picnicking there lay the Shadow that darkens the world.
One gorgeous evening of gold and purple she was sitting by a highland stream with a lad of twenty, throwing ducks and drakes into the water.

She was not at all in love with him; but, immature as she was, she could not help seeing that he was a good deal in love with her.

He had been in uproarious spirits all the afternoon, and then somehow he had contrived to find this moment alone with her.
'Well, it'll be good-bye to-morrow, or perhaps to-night,' he had said, as he flung yet another stone into the river, and she clapped her hands as she counted no less than six skips along the smooth water.
'And then no leave for a long time ?' 'Well, I'd been ten months without any before.' 'Perhaps we'll meet here again--next year.' 'I don't expect it,' he said quietly.
Her startled eyes met his full.
'It'll be worse fighting this winter than last--it'll go on getting worse till the end.