ally he had found it so in his own circle; but
he held also very strong beliefs, seldom expressed, as to their social
disadvantages and their physical weakness. The record of the Germans
towards women in France and Flanders, a record he had verified for
himself, had perhaps done more than anything else to feed the stern flame
of war in his own soul. At thirty-two, he would probably have already
been a married man, but for the war. He rather fiercely held that it was
a man's duty to marry and have children. But beyond a few passing fancies
he had never been in love; and since the American declaration of war, he
had been, like his President, out to "make the world safe for democracy";
and the ardour of the struggle had swept his private interests out of
sight.

All the same here he was, walking his motor cycle up the field road
leading to Great End Farm, and looking eagerly about him. A lonely
position, but beautiful! On the woods behind the house he turned a
professional eye. Fine timber! The man who was to succeed him at Ralstone
would no doubt have the cutting of it. The farm quadrangle, with its
sixteenth century barn, out of which the corn seemed to be actually
bursting from various open doors and windows, appeared to him through
that glamour which, for the intelligent American, belongs to everything
that medieval and Elizabethan England has bequeathed to the England of
the present. He will back himself, he thinks, to plan and build a modern
town better than the Britisher--in any case quicker. But the mosses and
tiles of an old Brookshire barn beat him.

Ellesborough paused at the gate to watch two land lassies carrying
pails of milk across the yard towards a prolongation of the farm-house,
which he supposed was the dairy. Just beyond the farm-yard, two great
wheat-stacks were visible; while in the hayfields running up to the
woods, large hay-stacks, already nearly thatched, showed dimly in the
evening light. And all this was run by women, worked by Women! Well,
American women, so he heard from home, were doing the same in the fields
and farms of the States. It was all part, he supposed, of a world
movement, by which, no less than by the war itself, these great years
would be for ever remembered.

The farm-house itself, however, seemed to him from the outside a poor,
flimsy thing, unworthy of the old farm buildings. He could see that the
walls of it were only a brick thick, and in spite of the pretty curtains,
he