erest me. You had a--a sort of
art--in the days--the days before the war."

"Really?" he said, with involuntary gloom. "But now, you see, the war
is going on," he continued in such a dead, equable tone that she felt a
slight chill fall over her shoulders. And yet she persisted. For there's
nothing more unswerving in the world than a woman's caprice.

"It could be a tale not of this world," she explained.

"You want a tale of the other, the better world?" he asked, with a
matter-of-fact surprise. "You must evoke for that task those who have
already gone there."

"No. I don't mean that. I mean another--some other--world. In the
universe--not in heaven."

"I am relieved. But you forget that I have only five days' leave."

"Yes. And I've also taken a five days' leave from--from my duties."

"I like that word."

"What word?"

"Duty."

"It is horrible--sometimes."

"Oh, that's because you think it's narrow. But it isn't. It contains
infinities, and--and so------"

"What is this jargon?"

He disregarded the interjected scorn. "An infinity of absolution, for
instance," he continued. "But as to this another world'--who's going to
look for it and for the tale that is in it?"

"You," she said, with a strange, almost rough, sweetness of assertion.

He made a shadowy movement of assent in his chair, the irony of which
not even the gathered darkness could render mysterious.

"As you will. In that world, then, there was once upon a time a
Commanding Officer and a Northman. Put in the capitals, please, because
they had no other names. It was a world of seas and continents and
islands------"

"Like the earth," she murmured, bitterly.

"Yes. What else could you expect from sending a man made of our common,
tormented clay on a voyage of discovery? What else could he find? What
else could you understand or care for, or feel the existence of even?
There was comedy in it, and slaughter."

"Always like the earth," she murmured. "Always. And since I could find
in the universe only what was deeply rooted in the fibres of my being
there was love in it, too. But we won't talk of that."

"No. We won't," she said, in a neutral tone which concealed perfectly
her relief--or her disappointment. Then after a pause she added: "It's
going to be a comic story."

"Well------" he paused, too. "Yes. In a way. In a very grim way. It will
be human, and, as you know, comedy is but a matter of the visual angle.
And it won't be a noisy