ttracting any attention. This time she brought no gift of flowers, only
she knelt by the grave, and whispered her happiness in the prayer she
prayed.

"God keep him always, and bring him back to me."

CHAPTER XXXI

"God gave us grace to love you
Men whom our hearts hold dear;
We too have faced the battle
Striving to hide our fear.

"God gave us strength to send you,
Courage to let you go;
All that it meant to lose you
Only our sad hearts know.

"Yet by your very manhood
Hold we your honour fast.
God shall give joy to England
When you come home at last."

Not till she felt Mabel's soft warm lips on her cheek and knew herself
held in the other's arms, did Joan wake to the fact that the marriage
was finished and that she was Dick's wife. All the morning she had moved
and answered questions and smiled, when other people smiled, in a sort
of trance, out of which she was afraid to waken. The only fact that
stood out very clear was that Dick was going away in the afternoon;
every time she saw a clock it showed that the afternoon was so many
minutes nearer.

"You have got to help me to be brave," she had said to Dick the night
before. "Other women let their men go, and make no outward fuss. I don't
want to be different to them."

"And you won't be," he had answered, kissing her. "If you feel like
crying, just look at me, and as your lord and master, I'll frown at you
to show that I don't approve."

He himself was in the wildest, most hilarious of spirits. As he had said
to Joan, the thought of death had only touched upon his mind for a
second; now the mere idea of it seemed ridiculous. He was going out to
help in a great fight, and he was going to marry Joan. She would be
waiting for him when he came back; what could a man want more?

The Rutherfords came up on Friday to spend the night before the wedding
in town, and in the evening Joan and Dick went to a theatre. It was,
needless to say, his idea, but he did it with a notion that it would
cheer Joan up. If you want to know real misery, sit through a musical
comedy with someone you love more than the whole world next to you, and
with the knowledge that he is going to the War the next day in your
heart. Joan thought of it every moment. When the curtain was up and the
audience in darkness, Dick would slip his hand into hers and hold it,
but his eyes followed the events on the stage, and