ffort.

Freddy looked so handsome in his uniform that Margaret's heart felt
bursting with tragic pride. Nothing was too good to die for England,
but surely, surely Freddy was too beautiful to be blinded or disfigured
by all the hellish contrivances which the brutalized enemy had proved
themselves past masters in devising? Even in Egypt he had not been
more sunburned, and never had his hair looked so adorably bright and
youthful. Margaret could think of nothing but his beauty; it seemed to
burst upon her suddenly and unexpectedly.

Freddy was conscious of her pride and admiration, but being true
Lamptons, their greeting of one another was characteristically brief.
It was the first time that Freddy had seen his sister in her V.A.D.
uniform; his eyes took in all her points with one quick glance. She
looked clean and slight and attractive, and conspicuously well-bred.
Her abundant hair showed to advantage under her blue hat, while her
teeth and her eyes seemed to Freddy remarkably beautiful. A V.A.D.
uniform is not becoming, but if a girl is striking-looking, it
accentuates her good points; frumps and mediocrities it extinguishes
altogether.

"Come and have some tea," Freddy said. "I'm frightfully thirsty."

Margaret walked off with him proudly. He was her own brother, the
Freddy she had worked with so long and so intimately in the little hut
in Egypt, this alert, dignified soldier. The war was in its infancy;
women were still thrilled by khaki, and extraordinarily proud of their
men who wore it. Margaret felt so proud of Freddy that she was a
little awed by him. In her heart she was kneeling at his feet, while
in her subconscious mind there was a prayer, that his beauty and youth
might not be spoilt, that his splendid manhood might be given back to
England--it had other work to do.

Her tea, which Freddy had ordered in the large tea-room at Charing
Cross Station, proved very difficult to swallow. Something filled her
throat; it almost choked her, something which was a strange mixture of
pride and tears and happiness. She had no desire to eat or drink; she
was quite content to sit still. All she wanted to do was just to be
near Freddy and look at him.

In this last half-hour, perhaps the last she would ever spend with him,
there seemed to be nothing important enough to say. She certainly
could not speak of the things which were in her heart. When people
realize that they are together for perhaps the la