“Be good, sweet child. And let who can be clever,” Joan quoted. “Would that be your text?” “Yes,” he said, “I love the sea. It’s clean and strong.”!

“I couldn’t face it,” he went on; “the way people would be looking at me in trains and omnibuses; the things people would say of me, the things I should imagine they were saying; what my valet would be thinking of me. Oh, I’m ashamed enough of myself. It’s the artistic temperament, I suppose. We must always be admired, praised. We’re not the stuff that martyrs are made of. We must for ever be kow-towing to the cackling geese around us. We’re so terrified lest they should hiss us.” The laugh died away and a shadow fell upon his face.

“Oh, come,” struck in a youngster who was lying perfectly flat, face downwards on his bed: it was the position in which he could breathe easiest. He raised his head a couple of inches and twisted it round so as to get his mouth free. “It isn’t as bad as all that. Why, the Thirty-third swarmed into Fort Malmaison of their own accord, though ’twas like jumping into a boiling furnace, and held it for three days against pretty nearly a division. There weren’t a dozen of them left when we relieved them. They had no ammunition left. They’d just been filling up the gaps with their bodies. And they wouldn’t go back even then. We had to drag them away. ‘They shan’t pass,’ ‘They shan’t pass!’—that’s all they kept saying.” His voice had sunk to a thin whisper. She made a little impatient movement with her hands that was characteristic of her. “Personally, I like men,” she went on. “It is so splendid the way they enjoy life: just like a dog does, whether it’s wet or fine. We are always blinking up at the clouds and worrying about our hat. It would be so nice to be able to have friendship with them. He needed her. She heard his passionate, low voice, as she had heard it in the little garden above Meudon: “Because you won’t be there; and without you I can do nothing.” What right had this poor, worn-out shadow to stand between them, to the end? Had love and life no claims, but only weakness? She had taken all, had given nothing. It was but reparation she was making. Why stop her?