y, do you understand Michael's poems?"

He remembered his mother's apology for not understanding them: "Darling,
I _do_ see that they're very beautiful." He remembered how he had wished
that they would give up the struggle and leave his poems alone. They
were not written for them. He had been amused and irritated when he had
seen his father holding the book doggedly in front of him, his poor old
hands twitching with embarrassment whenever he thought Michael was
looking at him.

And now he, who had been so indifferent and so contemptuous, was
sensitive to the least quiver of his mother's upper lip.

Veronica's were the only eyes that were kind to him; that did not hunt
him down with implacable suggestion and reminder.

Veronica had been rejected too. She was not strong enough to nurse in
the hospitals. She was only strong enough to work from morning to night,
packing and carrying large, heavy parcels for the Belgian soldiers. She
wanted Michael to be sorry for her because she couldn't be a nurse.
Rosalind Jervis was a nurse. But he was not sorry. He said he would very
much rather she didn't do anything that Rosalind did.

"So would Nicky," he said.

And then: "Veronica, do _you_ think I ought to enlist?"

The thought was beginning to obsess him.

"No," she said; "you're different.

"I know how you feel about it. Nicky's heart and soul are in the War. If
he's killed it can only kill his body. _Your_ soul isn't in it. It would
kill your soul."

"It's killing it now, killing everything I care for."

"Killing everything we all care for, except the things it can't kill."

That was one Sunday evening in October. They were standing together on
the long terrace under the house wall. Before them, a little to the
right, on the edge of the lawn, the great ash-tree rose over the garden.
The curved and dipping branches swayed and swung in a low wind that
moved like quiet water.

"Michael," she said, "do look what's happening to that tree."

"I see," he said.

It made him sad to look at the tree; it made him sad to look at
Veronica--because both the tree and Veronica were beautiful.

"When I was a little girl I used to sit and look and look at that tree
till it changed and got all thin and queer and began to move towards me.

"I never knew whether it had really happened or not; I don't know
now--or whether it was the tree or me. It was as if by looking and
looking you could make the tree more real and more alive."