“Thought you looked a bit like it,” said the girl. “I’m in the chorus. It’s better than being in service or in a shop: that’s all you can say for it.” “What do you advise me?” he asked. “I haven’t decided yet.”!

“Are you, too, a Christian?” he asked of Joan. He looked into her eyes, holding her hand, and she felt his body trembling. She knew he was about to speak, and held up a warning hand.

A middle-aged sergeant, who had a wound in the stomach and was sitting up in his bed, looked across. “There was a line of Germans came upon us,” he said, “at Bras. I thought I must be suffering from a nightmare when I saw them. They had thrown away their rifles and had all joined hands. They came dancing towards us just like a row of ballet girls. They were shrieking and laughing, and they never attempted to do anything. We just waited until they were close up and then shot them down. It was like killing a lot of kids who had come to have a game with us. The one I potted got his arms round me before he coughed himself out, calling me his ‘liebe Elsa,’ and wanting to kiss me. Lord! You can guess how the Boche ink-slingers spread themselves over that business: ‘Sonderbar! Colossal! Unvergessliche Helden.’ Poor devils!” “The difficulty I have always been up against,” explained her father, “has been their suspicion. ‘What’s the cunning old rascal up to now? What’s his little game?’ That is always what I have felt they were thinking to themselves whenever I have wanted to do anything for them. It isn’t anything he says to them. It seems to be just he, himself.” “Oh, yes,” he answered. “But I tried the wrong way.” “The right way might be found,” he added, “by the right man, and woman.”