._

Dear Old Thing,--We're all furious here at the way you've been
treated. I've resigned as a protest, and I'm going into the R.
A. M. So has Miss Mullins--: resigned I mean--so Queenie's the
only woman left in the Corps. That'll suit her down to the
ground.

I gave myself the treat of telling Cutler what I jolly well
think of him. But of course you know she made him hoof you out.
She's been trying for it ever since you joined. It's all rot his
saying you didn't hit it off with her, when everybody knows you
were a perfect angel to her. Why, you backed her every time when
we were all going for her. It's quite true that the peace of God
has settled on the Corps since you left it; but that's only
because Queenie doesn't rage round any more.

You'll observe that she never went for Miss Mullins. That's
because Miss Mullins kept well out of the line of fire. And if
you hadn't jolly well distinguished yourself there she'd have
let you alone, too. The real trouble began that day you were at
Dixmude. It wasn't a bit because she was afraid you'd be killed.
Queenie doesn't want you about when the War medals are handed
round. Everybody sees that but old Cutler. He's too much gone on
her to see anything. She can twist him round and round and tie
him up in knots.

But Cutler isn't in it now. Queenie's turned him down for that
young Noel Fenwick who's got your job. Cutler's nose was a
sight, I can tell you.

Well, I'm not surprised that Queenie's husband funks her. She's
a terror. Worse than war.

Good-bye and Good Luck, Old Thing, till we meet again.

Yours ever,

Dicky Cartwright.

VII

ADELINE

i

They would never know what it cost her to come back and look after
Colin. That knowledge was beyond Adeline Fielding. She congratulated
Anne and expected Anne to congratulate herself on being "well out of
it." Her safety was revolting and humiliating to Anne when she thought
of Queenie and Cutler and Dicky, and Eliot and Jerrold and all the
allied armies in the thick of it. She had left a world where life was
lived at its highest pitch of intensity for a world where people were
only half-alive. To be safe from the chance of sudden violent death was
to be only half-alive.

Her one consolation had been that now she would see Jerrold. But she did
not see him. Jerrold had given up his appointment