ried before he left for France in 'sixteen, and then had another
week together in the January of 'seventeen at his house in the Clayford
country. That was all." Millie Splay was silent for a few minutes. Then
she resumed cheerfully:

"But she is better now. She will talk of him, indeed, likes at times to
talk of him; she is comforted by it, and the boy"--Millie's face became
radiant--"the boy is splendid. You shall see him."

Martin was shown the boy. He seemed to him much like any other boy of
his age, but such remarkable things in the way of avoirdupois poundage
and teething, serenity of temper and quickness of apprehension were
explained to him that he felt that he must be in the presence of a
prodigy.

"Chichester will want to see you. He is in the library. He is Chairman
of our Food Committee. You may have seen it in the papers," said Millie
with a smile. "He is back in the papers again, you know."

"Good. Then he won't object to me smoking a cigarette," said Martin.

He motored over in the afternoon to the house on the other side of
Sussex where he was to find Joan. He drove her away with him, and as
they came to the top of a little crest in the flat country, Martin
stopped the car and looked about him.

"I never cease to be surprised by the beauty of this country when I come
home to it."

"Yes, but I wish _that_ would stop."

_That_ was the dull and muffled boom of the great guns across the sea.
They sat and listened to it in silence.

"There it comes again!" said Joan in a quiet voice. "Oh, I do wish it
would stop! What has happened to me, has happened to enough of us."

As Millie had said, she was glad to talk of Harry Luttrell to his
friends; and she talked simply and naturally, with a little note of
wistfulness heard in all the words.

"We were going to have a small house in London and spend our time
between it and the old Manor at Clayford.... Harry had seen the
house.... He was always writing that I must watch for it to come into
the market.... It had a brass front door. There we should be. We could
go out when we wished, and when we wished we could be snug behind our
own brass door." Joan laughed simply and lovingly as she spoke. Hillyard
had never seen her more beautiful than she was at this moment. If grief
had taken from her just the high brilliancy of her beauty, it had added
to it a most appealing tenderness.

"After all," she said again, "Harry fulfilled himself. I love to think
of tha