She made her “good-night” extra affectionate, hoping to disguise her impatience. She wanted to get up to her own room. Joan hoped she was exaggerating. “I must try and select a table where there is some good-natured girl to keep me in countenance,” she said with a smile.!

“Nor would you,” he added, turning to her suddenly for the first time, “I know that. But I should be afraid—for you.” “Thank you,” she said, “for being so kind—and wise. I shall always love and honour her.”

He was reading a letter. “You were dining there on Friday night, weren’t you?” he asked her, without looking up. A middle-aged sergeant, who had a wound in the stomach and was sitting up in his bed, looked across. “There was a line of Germans came upon us,” he said, “at Bras. I thought I must be suffering from a nightmare when I saw them. They had thrown away their rifles and had all joined hands. They came dancing towards us just like a row of ballet girls. They were shrieking and laughing, and they never attempted to do anything. We just waited until they were close up and then shot them down. It was like killing a lot of kids who had come to have a game with us. The one I potted got his arms round me before he coughed himself out, calling me his ‘liebe Elsa,’ and wanting to kiss me. Lord! You can guess how the Boche ink-slingers spread themselves over that business: ‘Sonderbar! Colossal! Unvergessliche Helden.’ Poor devils!” Her little drummer played less and less frequently to her as the months passed by. It didn’t seem to be the war he had looked forward to. The illustrated papers continued to picture it as a sort of glorified picnic where smiling young men lolled luxuriously in cosy dug-outs, reading their favourite paper. By curious coincidence, it generally happened to be the journal publishing the photograph. Occasionally, it appeared, they came across the enemy, who then put up both hands and shouted “Kamerad.” But the weary, wounded men she talked to told another story.