hey had existed
before the war. Her life had begun all over again. The war was
remaking it. After a serious illness or a shattered love-affair no
woman can take up life at exactly the same standpoint as before.

Margaret found it impossible to imagine personal ambitions and personal
amusements ever forming a part of her life again. Happiness brought
scorn with the very mention of it. The excitement and the
daily-accumulating list of horrors which shocked the unsuspecting
people of England during the first few months of the war, must be
vividly in the reader's thoughts while he pictures Margaret in her life
as a pantry-maid, a physically-weary pantry-maid, in a vast house in
London which had been converted into a hospital. She was only one of
the many girls in London in the various homes and hospitals who were
drudging with aching limbs and loyal hearts from morning until night.

She preferred being pantry-maid to lift-maid, which was the only other
post in the house which she had been offered. Taking visitors up and
down in a lift all day long seemed to her more monotonous than washing
up cups and saucers which the wounded drank out of, and scrubbing
boards and washing out cupboards. Margaret was only doing her humble
bit, a bit which required few brains and little education; a bit which
necessitated a good deal of sturdy grit and devotion. Not a soul in
the house knew nor cared anything about the life which she had led
before the war, and her college record was of less account than the
fact that she looked practical and strong. She had been given the post
on the strength of her physical perfection rather than her proficiency
as a V.A.D.

During the first three months she heard fairly often from Freddy, who
was cheerfully enduring what thousands of young Englishmen endured
during the early days of training.

If this is a war of second-lieutenants, Freddy was an excellent
specimen of the men who have won renown. His physique laughed at
hardship; his practical mind adored the order and method which is
essentially a part of military efficiency. His work in Egypt, far as
it seems removed from modern warfare, served a good purpose when
trench-digging and planning became a part of his training.

October had come and still no news had reached him of Michael, nor had
Margaret had any word of her lover through the Iretons. Freddy was
comforting himself with the assurance that the war had satisfactorily
driven