She would accept it. The wonder of it should cast out her doubts and fears. She would seek to make herself worthy of it. Consecrate it with her steadfastness, her devotion. Crouching close to the ground, behind the spreading roots of a giant oak, she raised her eyes. Before her lay a sea of smooth, soft mud nearly a mile wide. From the centre rose a solitary tree, from which all had been shot away but two bare branches like outstretched arms above the silence. Beyond, the hills rose again. There was something unearthly in the silence that seemed to brood above that sea of mud. The old priest told her of the living men, French and German, who had stood there day and night sunk in it up to their waists, screaming hour after hour, and waving their arms, sinking into it lower and lower, none able to help them: until at last only their screaming heads were left, and after a time these, too, would disappear: and the silence come again.!

He rearranged his wife’s feather and smoothed her tumbled hair. She looked up at him and smiled. “Madge has fallen in love with him, and her judgment is not to be relied upon,” he said. “I suppose you couldn’t answer a straight question, if you tried.”

“No, it isn’t,” said Joan. “I came down to see Dad. I didn’t know you were back.” She spoke with some asperity; and his face fell. Guests with other engagements were taking their leave. A piquante little woman, outrageously but effectively dressed—she looked like a drawing by Beardsley—drew her aside. “I’ve always wished I were a man,” she said. “It seemed to me that they had all the power. From this afternoon, I shall be proud of belonging to the governing sex.” “I fancy that’s the idea,” said Joan. “What will you do if you fail? Go back to China?”