Mrs. Phillips stooped and kissed her. “Of course, dear,” she said. “Perhaps I shall, now that my mind is easier.” He laughed. “And this new journal of his?” he asked. “It’s got to be published in London, hasn’t it?”!

“But I’ve won,” she said. “I’m dying further forward. I’ve helped advance the line.” “Oh, she’s changed a good deal,” answered Joan. “But I think she’ll get over it all right, if she’s careful.”

A motor carried them to where the road ended, and from there, a little one-horse ambulance took them on to almost the last trees of the forest. There was no life to be seen anywhere. During the last mile, they had passed through a continuous double line of graves; here and there a group of tiny crosses keeping one another company; others standing singly, looking strangely lonesome amid the torn-up earth and shattered trees. But even these had ceased. Death itself seemed to have been frightened away from this terror-haunted desert. “Because you won’t be there,” he answered, “and without you I can’t do it. You think I’m always like I am to-night, bragging, confident. So I am when you are with me. You give me back my strength. The plans and hopes and dreams that were slipping from me come crowding round me, laughing and holding out their hands. They are like the children. They need two to care for them. I want to talk about them to someone who understands them and loves them, as I do. I want to feel they are dear to someone else, as well as to myself: that I must work for them for her sake, as well as for my own. I want someone to help me to bring them up.” “No,” answered Joan. “But my mother was. Are you?”