f work and readiness and exactitude. Her accounts,
her correspondence, her information were always in order. When she took
the prescribed walks and in some aloof path or corner met the strong,
slim khaki-clad figure, they walked or stood or sat closely side by side
and talked of many things--though most of all they dwelt on one. She
could ask Donal questions and he could throw light on such things as
young soldiers knew better than most people. She came into close
touch--a shuddering touch sometimes it was--with needs and facts
concerning marchings and trenches and attacks and was therefore able to
visualise and to speak definitely of necessities not always understood.

"How did you find that out?" little black-clad Lady Kathryn asked her
one day. "I wish I had known it before George went away."

"A soldier told me," was her answer. "Soldiers know things we don't."

"The world is made of soldiers now," said Kathryn. "And one is always
talking to them. I shall begin to ask them questions about small things
like that."

It was the same morning that as they stood alone together for a few
minutes Kathryn suddenly put her hand upon Robin's shoulder.

"You never--_never_ feel the least angry--when you remember about
George--the night of the dance," she pleaded shakily. "Do you, Robin?
You couldn't _now_! Could you?"

Tears rushed into Robin's eyes.

"Never--never!" she said. "I always remember him--oh, quite differently!
He----" she hesitated a second and began again. "He did something--so
wonderfully kind--before he went away--something for me. That is what I
remember. And his nice voice--and his good eyes."

"Oh! he _was_ good! He was!" exclaimed Kathryn in a sort of despairing
impatience. "So many of them are! It's awful!" And she sat down in the
nearest chair and cried hopelessly into her crushed handkerchief while
Robin tried to soothe--not to comfort her. There was no comfort to
offer. And behind the rose tinted mists her own spectre merely pretended
to veil itself.

* * * * *

When she lay in bed at night in her quiet room she often lay awake long
and long for pure bliss. The world in which people were near--_near_--to
one another and loved each other, the world Donal had always belonged to
even when he was a little boy, she now knew and lived in. There was no
loneliness in it. If there was pain or trouble some one who loved you
was part of it and you, and so you could bear it.