stories of their lives tragically
unfinished. But since I read in your book that marvelous scene with
those suddenly released spirits--young men of both sides, friends and
enemies, meeting and talking to each other, saying, 'Is this all?' 'Is
this the worst that death can do to us?' why, I seem to pass beyond the
battlefield! I go with those happy, surprised young men who are seeing
for the first time the great 'reality behind the thing' and a feeling
of rest and immense peace comes to me. I don't keep it long at a time.
I can't, yet. But if you write and say you _know_, I think I may some
day learn to keep it.

"I have the English edition of your book, but I have read in a
newspaper an extract from the interview a journalist had with the
publisher in New York. You see, everybody who has some one dear in the
war, or has lost some one beloved, is reading and talking of the book.
They all want to know things about you, but perhaps not all for as
_real_ a reason as mine. Some people have said that perhaps the author
may be a woman, who chooses to write under a man's name. I felt sure
from the first it couldn't be so, for only a man could say those things
as you say them; but I was glad of your publisher's assurance that you
are a man, and that your home now is in the far West in America.
Perhaps I shouldn't have dared write you if you were in this country,
because--but no, I needn't explain.

"My name can be of no interest to you, yet I will sign it.

"Yours gratefully, Barbara Denin."

"Barbara Denin." ... _She had kept his name!_

Many a woman did (he was aware) after a second marriage continue to use
the name of her first husband, in order to retain a title. But all he
knew of the girl Barbara Fay made it amazing to him that she should
hold to the name of a man she had never loved, after becoming the wife
of a man she had loved since childhood.

A wild doubt set his brain on fire. Could there have been some terrible
misunderstanding? Was it possible that after all she had never married
Trevor d'Arcy? ... Carried away on the flame of passion fanned by her
letter, Denin told himself that it might be so, and that if she were
free he would still have the right to go back to her. If she had not
given herself to another man she belonged to him, to him alone, and she
would not hate him if he explained the sacrifice he had made for her
sake.

He was on his feet before he knew what he was doing. The blinding hope
lit bo