, but here the breakings are like manna.

And pears, with the old shopman's trick, little, bitten ones at the
bottom, fine ones at the top. Soft sugar, lump sugar, coffee. As one
stirs the coffee round in the tin the whole room smells of it, that
brown, burnt smell.

And then to click the light on, let down the blind, stir the fire, close
the door of the little bunk, and, looking round it, think what
exhilaration of liberty I have here.

Let them pile on the rules, invent and insist; yet behind them, beneath
them, I have that strong, secret liberty of an institution that runs
like a wind in me and lifts my mind like a leaf.

So long as I conform absolutely, not a soul will glance at my
thoughts--few at my face. I have only to be silent and conform, and I
might be in so far a land that even the eye of God had lost me.

I took the plate of biscuits, the two plates of cheese, one in each hand
and one balanced with a new skill on my arm, and carried them into the
dining-room, where the tables were already laid and only one light kept
on as yet for economy's sake.

Low voices.... There in the dimmest corner sat Captain Matthew, his
chin dug deep in his grey dressing-gown, and beside him a little elderly
man, his hat on his knees, his anxious, ordinary face turned towards the
light.

A citizen ... a baker or a brewer, tinker, tailor, or
candlestick-maker...?

There had been the buying of the uniform, the visits to the camp in
England, the parcels to send out--always the parcels--week by week. And
now nothing; no more parcels, no more letters, silence.

Only the last hungry pickings from Captain Matthew's tired memory and
nervous speech.

I turned away with a great shrinking.

In a very few minutes the citizen went past my bunk door, his hat in his
hand, his black coat buttoned; taking back to his home and his family
the last facts that he might ever learn.

At the end of the passage he almost collided with that stretcher which
bears a flag.

Of the two, the stretcher moved me least.

_My_ Sister is afraid of death. She told me so. And not the less afraid,
she said, after all she has seen of it. That is terrible.

But the new Sister is afraid of life. She is shorter-sighted.

The rain has been pouring all day.

To-night it has stopped, and all the hill is steam and drizzle and black
with the blackness that war has thrust upon the countryside.

_My_ Sister has gone.

Two nights ago I went up to a dinn