Arthur was still away when she arrived home. He had gone to Norway on business. Her father was afraid he would find it difficult to get back. Telegraphic communication had been stopped, and they had had no news of him. Her father was worried. A big Government contract had come in, while many of his best men had left to enlist. She saw the ditches, like long graves dug for the living, where the weary, listless men stood knee-deep in mud, hoping for wounds that would relieve them from the ghastly monotony of their existence; the holes of muddy water where the dead things lay, to which they crept out in the night to wash a little of the filth from their clammy bodies and their stinking clothes; the holes dug out of the mud in which they ate and slept and lived year after year: till brain and heart and soul seemed to have died out of them, and they remembered with an effort that they once were men.!

“I want to know,” she said. Flossie caught sight of the clock and jumped up. “Who was it said that woman would be the last thing man would civilize?” she asked.

They had reached the Abbey. Joan turned and they retraced their steps slowly. “Thanks,” he answered. “I may ask you to later on. But just now—” He paused. “Hardly the sort of anecdote that a truly noble and high-minded young woman would have received with laughter,” he commented.