“I’m so afraid,” she answered gravely. “That I shall come to love you too much: the home, the children and you. I shall have none left over.” “Unless it all comes right in the end,” she added musingly; “and the poor old soul pegs out. I wouldn’t give much for her liver.”!

“Quick,” said the doctor. He pushed her in front of him, and she almost fell down a flight of mud-covered steps that led into the earth. She found herself in a long, low gallery, lighted by a dim oil lamp, suspended from the blackened roof. A shelf ran along one side of it, covered with straw. Three men lay there. The straw was soaked with their blood. They had been brought in the night before by the stretcher-bearers. A young surgeon was rearranging their splints and bandages, and redressing their wounds. They would lie there for another hour or so, and then start for their twenty kilometre drive over shell-ridden roads to one or another of the great hospitals at the base. While she was there, two more cases were brought in. The doctor gave but a glance at the first one and then made a sign; and the bearers passed on with him to the further end of the gallery. He seemed to understand, for he gave a low, despairing cry and the tears sprang to his eyes. He was but a boy. The other had a foot torn off. One of the orderlies gave him two round pieces of wood to hold in his hands while the young surgeon cut away the hanging flesh and bound up the stump. “They are not increasing in numbers,” he answered, “and the Carleton group is. There is no reason why in another ten years he should not control the entire popular press of the country. He’s got the genius and he’s got the means.”

“I thought you were something,” answered the girl. “I’m an artist. Or, rather, was,” she added after a pause. “Oh, don’t come the kid,” advised Flossie. “If you don’t mind being talked about yourself, you might think of him. If Carleton gets hold of it, he’s done for.” “If the world were properly stage-managed, that’s what you ought to be,” he said, “the wife of a Prime Minister. I can see you giving such an excellent performance.”