there." She curled herself up on the floor, leaning
back against his knees. "Mary"--he swallowed something which had stuck
in his throat--"Mary, I've got to enlist."

She was round in a flash.

"What do you mean you've got to?" she cried indignantly. "That beast
going to make you?" The beast was John's employer, a kindly man, whose
fault it was to regard John as one only among many, a matter on which
Mary often longed to put him right.

"No," said John. "But--but I've got to."

"Who's making you, then?"

"I don't know ... I suppose the GERMAN EMPEROR really."

"There's lots that ought to go before _you_ go. You've got a wife and a
child. Let those without go first."

"I know," said John doggedly. "I've thought of that."

She threw her arms round his neck in a sudden passion. "You _can't_
leave me, John, you _can't_! I couldn't bear it. Why, we've only been
married eighteen months. How can you want to go away and leave me and
baby and---- Why, you might get killed!" Her voice went up to a shriek.

"I don't _want_ to leave you," said John, a strange, terrifying,
rapid-speaking John; "I hate it. I hate war, I hate fighting, I hate
leaving you--oh, my God, how I hate leaving you, my darling! I've prayed
to God all day to stop the war before I have to go, but of course He
won't. Oh, Mary, _help_ me to go; don't make it harder for me."

She got off his knee; she brought a chair up opposite to him; she sat
down in it and rested her chin on her hands and looked straight at him.

"Tell me all about it," she said. "I'm quite all right." So he told her
all about it, and she never took her eyes off his face.

"A man came into the office to-day to talk to us about the war. The
Governor introduced him--Denham, his name was ... I knew he was all
right at once. You know how you feel that about some people ... He said
he thought perhaps some of us didn't quite know what to do, and he
wondered if he could help any of us ... Said of course he knew that, if
we thought England was in danger, we'd all rush to enlist, but perhaps
we didn't quite know how much England _was_ in danger, and all that
England stood for--liberty, peace, nationality, honour and so on. In
fact he'd come down to see if any of us would like to fight for England
... Said he was afraid it was rather cheek of him to ask us to defend
him, because that was what it came to, he being too old to fight. Said
he knew some of us would have to make terrible sacrifices