y and inert from want of sleep, but their
minds were alive and worked with feverish swiftness, like the minds of
people in a long illness, when consciousness creeps above the level of
pain.

Winn had just returned from his evening round of the trenches. Lionel
was resting in his dug-out; he heard Winn's approach. Winn was coughing
again--a little choking, short cough.

He bent double and crouched down beside Lionel without speaking.

"Well," said Lionel, "to-morrow we'll be out of this. About time
too--with that cough of yours."

Winn was silent for a moment, then he said, "I suppose you know I'm
nearly done?"

Lionel bowed his head. "Yes," he muttered, "I suppose I know it."

After a pause Winn began again.

"There isn't much good talking, of course. On the other hand, you may as
well know what I feel. I've had tremendous luck in one way and another.
I never expected to get the regiment, for instance--and your coming out
here and all that. I've seen how jolly things could be."

"You haven't had them," said Lionel in a low voice. "The things you
wanted most, I mean. Your pitch was queered too soon."

"I don't know," said Winn, painstakingly. "In a sense, of course, you
haven't had things if you've only seen 'em. Still when you come to think
of it, you partly have. Look at the Germans; we've worked considerably
into them without seeing 'em, haven't we? What I mean is that I
appreciate goodness now; I see its point. Not that I'd have kept clear a
moment by myself. I hope you quite understand that? I've been a
blackguard and I'd have been a worse one if I'd had the chance. But I'm
glad I hadn't the chance now. I don't know that I'm putting the thing
straight--but you know what she's like? Thank God I couldn't alter her!"

They listened for a moment to the night. Their ears were always awake,
registering sounds from the sodden, death-ridden fields beneath them,
and above, but they heard nothing beyond the drip of the rain, an
occasional groan from a man tortured by rheumatism, and the long-drawn
scream of a distant shell.

"You can call yourself what you like," said Lionel at last. "I know what
you are, that's enough for me, and she knew it; that's one reason I got
to caring for her.

"I dare say that seems a rummy thing to you, to care for a woman
because she cares for another man. But it's a fact."

Winn moved uneasily. Then he said abruptly, "Look here, young 'un, I was
wrong before when I asked you to st