had given him a delicious new world of his
own. They had told him that she had always trusted him. They had
obliterated the war, and the fact that he was journeying towards it.
They had made his pulses throb again with the wine of passion and gay
romance. He was an individual once more, enjoying the sweetness of the
woman whose love had been so devoutly his.

It seemed so odd that the fresh, clean, proud-looking girl, with the
dark hair and the crimson cross on her breast, behind the food counter,
was actually the woman who had trembled in his arms under the desert
stars, for her very fear of her love for him. She had once been very,
very near to him; she had seemed an indispensable part of his life.
To-night, standing behind the buffet, although she was materially quite
close, she was hopelessly far away. His only privilege had been to
take a cup of tea from her hands. A world of fresh experience and
emotion had separated them.

For a long time he sat motionless on his kit, dreaming only of
Margaret. Now it was of the wonderful things which her eyes had told
him; now it was of the distance and circumstances which separated them.
Later on he roused himself out of his reverie, for the men in the
carriage at whose open door he was sitting were singing, "It's a long,
long way to Tipperary"--the song had not yet been depopularized by
"Keep the home-fires burning"; it was still sung by soldiers and
civilians and gramophones. The lusty, cheery voices brought Michael's
mind back to the stern reality of war. He peeped out into the night,
lifting up the blind from the window-pane and putting his head under it.

The cold, bleak day had given place to a starlit night, with a
high-sailing moon. The snowcapped mountains and distant forests of
solemn pine-trees looked serenely indifferent to the material affairs
of mankind. Their purity and indifference wounded Michael. How could
Nature remain so callously superior, so selfishly peaceful, while he
was hurrying to France, to witness cruelties which it had taken the
world all its great age to invent and put into action? These cold
mountains, rushing streams and hidden glens would just go on smiling in
the sunshine by day and sleeping peacefully under the moonlight, while
golden youth was sacrificing itself on the altar of Liberty.

As the train rushed on through the darkness, emitting sparks which
showed her pace, Michael's thoughts drifted to the old African in
el-Azh