ld avenge in honest warfare the hideous death of his
comrades.

This letter from Hadassah made Margaret realize the awful fact that
Freddy was dead as nothing else had done, that his death meant that she
could never, never again consult him, or speak to him, or hope to hear
from him. It was not only a case of patience and the distance of half
the world between them; it was a case of never, never again on this
earth. She had scarcely known the meaning of death until this
starvation for his sympathy revealed itself to her. The awful
difference between mere distance and death had escaped her. Hundreds
of men were dying, but death was talked of unconvincingly,
superficially.

Now, by some strange means, she suddenly saw the years of doing without
Freddy stretching out before her. The Valley where his work lay would
never see him again. His brains and extraordinary energy were lost to
the world; his archaeological work would be taken over by others.

The pent-up tears which Margaret had not shed when she received the
news of his death, or during all the busy days which followed it,
mingled themselves with the unrestrained weeping which Nature sent to
save her overwrought system. She cried uninterruptedly, until the
urgency of tears subsided. She dried her eyes and braced herself up.
Her weeping had stopped suddenly; it had exhausted itself.

It seemed to her that she could almost hear a voice repeating to her a
sentence out of Hadassah's letter. It was strikingly like Hadassah's
own voice. "Try to remember that your wonderful brother is still doing
his bit. He is working hard, wherever he is--be sure of this, for it
is what he would wish."

* * * * * *

Margaret carried this thought in her mind as she returned to her
pantry. Hadassah was right. Freddy was working; wherever he was, he
was busy, for he could not be happy if he was not working and helping
on the cause of the Allies. Freddy had been one of the few enthusiasts
in the early days of the war who had never pretended, even to himself,
that England's primary object in declaring war against Germany was to
avenge the devastation of Belgium. He knew that England had to enter
it to save herself and France from a similar devastation.

When she was busy at work again, Margaret said to herself, "Of all the
strange things which have happened during the last six months, perhaps
the strangest of all is the fact that in all th