to me to come and sit on your bed
because you were frightened. You always will matter.

"But Desmond didn't a little bit. You need'nt have tried to make me
_think_ she didn't. She really didn't. I only married her because she
was going to have a baby. And _that_ was because I remembered you and
the rotten time you'd had. I believe that would have kept me straight
with women if nothing else did.

"Of course I was an idiot about it. I didn't think of marrying you till
Vera told me I ought to have waited. Then it was too late.

"That's why I want you most awfully to have a baby."

"Yes, Nicky.

"I'll tell you what I'm going to do when I know it's coming. The cottage
belongs to Uncle Anthony, doesn't it?"

"Yes."

"Well, I love it. Do you think he'd let me live in it?"

"I think he'd give it to you if you asked him."

"For my very own. Like the apple-tree house. Very well, he'll give it to
me--I mean to both of us--and I shall come up here where it's all quiet
and you'd never know there was a war at all--even the Belgians have
forgotten it. And I shall sit out here and look at that hill, because
it's straight and beautiful. I won't--I simply won't think of anything
that isn't straight and beautiful. And I shall get strong. Then the baby
will be straight and beautiful and strong, too.

"I shall try--I shall try hard, Nicky--to make him like you."

* * * * *

Frances's one Day was not a success. It was taken up with little things
that had to be done for Nicky. Always they seemed, he and she, to be on
the edge of something great, something satisfying and revealing. It was
to come in a look or a word; and both would remember it afterwards
for ever.

In the evening Grannie, and Auntie Louie, and Auntie Emmeline, and
Auntie Edie, and Uncle Morrie, and Uncle Bartie came up to say good-bye.
And in the morning Nicholas went off to France, excited and happy, as he
had gone off on his wedding journey. And between Frances and her son the
great thing remained unsaid.

Time itself was broken. All her minutes were scattered like fine sand.

_February 27th, 1915._
B.E.F., FRANCE.

Dearest Mother and Dad,--I simply don't know how to thank you all for
the fur coat. It's pronounced the rippingest, by a long way, that's been
seen in these trenches. Did Ronny really choose it because it "looked as
if it had been made out of Timmy's tummy?" It makes me feel as if I
_was_ Timmy.