her alone with him.

It was not like yesterday. He did not take her in his arms. He sat
there, looking at her rather anxiously, keeping his distance. He seemed
to be wondering how she was going to take it.

He thought: "I've made a mess of it again. It wasn't fair to make her
want me--when I might have known. I ought to have left it."

And suddenly her soul swung round, released from yesterday.

She knew what he had wanted yesterday: that her senses should be ready
to follow where her heart led. But that was not the readiness he
required from her to-day; rather it was what his anxious eyes implored
her to put away from her.

There was something more.

He wasn't going to say the obvious things, the "Well, this is hard luck
on both of us. You must be brave. Don't make it too hard for me." (She
could have made it intolerable.) It wasn't that. He knew she was brave;
he knew she wouldn't make it hard for him; he knew he hadn't got to say
the obvious things.

There was something more; something tremendous. It came to her with the
power and sweetness of first passion; but without its fear. She no
longer wanted him to take her in his arms and hold her as he had held
her yesterday. Her swinging soul was steady; it vibrated to an
intenser rhythm.

She knew nothing now but that what she saw was real, and that they were
seeing it together. It was Reality itself. It was more than they. When
realization passed it would endure.

Never as long as they lived would they be able to speak of it, to say to
each other what it was they felt and saw.

* * * * *

He said, "I shall have to go soon."

And she said, "I know. Is there anything I can do?"

"I wish you'd go and see my mother some time. She'd like it."

"I should love to go and see her. What else?"

"Well--I've no business to ask you, but I wish you'd give it up."

"I'll give anything up. But what?"

"That ambulance of yours that's going to get into the firing line."

"Oh--"

"I know why you want to get there. You want to tackle the hardest and
most dangerous job. Naturally. But it won't make it easier for us to win
the War. You can't expect us to fight so comfy, and to be killed so
comfy, if we know our womenkind are being pounded to bits in the ground
we've just cleared. If I thought _you_ were knocking about
anywhere there--"

"It would make it too hard?"

"It would make me jumpy. The chances are I shouldn't have much time