“My third,” the Human Document corrected her. “After Eustace, I married Ivanoff. I say ‘married’ because I regard it as the holiest form of marriage. He had to return to his own country. There was a political movement on foot. He felt it his duty to go. I want you particularly to meet the boy. He will interest you.” They were speaking in whispered tones. Through the open doors they could see into the other room. Mrs. Phillips, under Airlie’s instructions, was venturing upon a cigarette.!

“I should love to be with you always,” he answered, “if you wished it. You won’t forget your promise?” She looked at him and smiled. “It’s quite easy,” she answered. “I always see her as she lay there with all the sorrow gone from her. She looked so beautiful and kind.”

Suddenly, while speaking, she fell into a passionate fit of weeping. She went on through her tears: “I did not know that you had been an actor,” she answered. There came a day in early spring. All night long the guns had never ceased. It sounded like the tireless barking of ten thousand giant dogs. Behind the hills, the whole horizon, like a fiery circle, was ringed with flashing light. Shapeless forms, bent beneath burdens, passed in endless procession through the village. Masses of rushing men swept like shadowy phantoms through the fitfully-illumined darkness. Beneath that everlasting barking, Joan would hear, now the piercing wail of a child; now a clap of thunder that for the moment would drown all other sounds, followed by a faint, low, rumbling crash, like the shooting of coals into a cellar. The wounded on their beds lay with wide-open, terrified eyes, moving feverishly from side to side.