“But you’re surely not suggesting any other kind of Press, at this period of the world’s history?” exclaimed Joan. “We old fellows feel a little sadly, at times, how unimportant we are,” he explained. “We are grateful when Youth throws us a smile.”!

He wrote her two days later from Ayr, giving her the name of his regiment, and again some six months later from Flanders. But there would have been no sense in her replying to that last. Flossie interrupted. “How about being quite frank?” she suggested. “Suppose we do love one another. How about putting it that way?”

“I’ve always been a coward,” he continued. “I fell in love with you the first day I met you on the stairs. But I dared not tell you.” “I do not think we women have the right to discuss war,” she confided to Joan in her gentle, high-bred voice. “I suppose you think that out of date. I should have thought so myself forty years ago. We talk of ‘giving’ our sons and lovers, as if they were ours to give. It makes me a little angry when I hear pampered women speak like that. It is the men who have to suffer and die. It is for them to decide.” “Yes,” said Joan. “Not any great number of them, not yet. But enough to show that I really am interesting them. It grows every week.”