was a good deal in love with
her. He had been in uproarious spirits all the afternoon, and then
somehow he had contrived to find this moment alone with her.

'Well, it'll be good-bye to-morrow, or perhaps to-night,' he had
said, as he flung yet another stone into the river, and she clapped
her hands as she counted no less than six skips along the smooth
water.

'And then no leave for a long time?'

'Well, I'd been ten months without any before.'

'Perhaps we'll meet here again--next year.'

'I don't expect it,' he said quietly.

Her startled eyes met his full.

'It'll be worse fighting this winter than last--it'll go on getting
worse till the end. I don't look to coming back.'

His tone was so cheerful and matter-of-fact that it confused her.

'Oh, Basil, don't talk like that!' was all she could find to say.

'Why not? Of course it's better not to talk about it. Nobody does.
But just this afternoon--when it's been so jolly--here with you, I
thought I'd like to say a word. Perhaps you'll remember--'

He threw another stone, and on the moor beyond the stream she heard
the grouse calling.

'Remember what?'

'That I was quite willing,' he said simply. 'That's all. It's worth
it.'

She could say nothing, but presently her hand dropped its pebble and
found its way into his, and he had held it without saying a word for
a little while. Then after dinner, with no good-bye to her, he had
disappeared by the night train to the south.

And that had been the spirit of all of them, those jolly, rampagious
lads, plain or handsome, clever or slow. Two of them were dead
already. But the one who had thrown ducks and drakes was still, so
far as she knew, somewhere in the Ypres salient, unscathed.

And after that she had come home to the atmosphere created by her
father's life and character, in this old house where she was born,
and in the estate round about it. It was as though she had only just
realized--begun to realize--her father's strangeness. His
eccentricities and unpopularity had meant little to her before. Her
own real interests had lain elsewhere; and her mind had been too
slow in developing to let her appreciate his fundamental difference
from other people.

At any rate her father's unpopularity had been lately acute, and
Pamela herself felt it bitterly, and shrank from her neighbours and
the cottage people. When Desmond came home with a D.S.O., or a
Victoria Cross, as of course he would, she supposed it