hed business of the paper hadn't come just at this
time," said Joan: "just when your voice is most needed.

"Couldn't you get enough money together to start something quickly," she
continued, the idea suddenly coming to her. "I think I could help you.
It wouldn't matter its being something small to begin with. So long as
it was entirely your own, and couldn't be taken away from you. You'd
soon work it up."

"Thanks," he answered. "I may ask you to later on. But just now--" He
paused.

Of course. For war you wanted men, to fight. She had been thinking of
them in the lump: hurrying masses such as one sees on cinema screens,
blurred but picturesque. Of course, when you came to think of it, they
would have to be made up of individuals--gallant-hearted, boyish sort of
men who would pass through doors, one at a time, into little rooms; give
their name and address to a soldier man seated at a big deal table. Later
on, one would say good-bye to them on crowded platforms, wave a
handkerchief. Not all of them would come back. "You can't make
omelettes without breaking eggs," she told herself.

It annoyed her, that silly saying having come into her mind. She could
see them lying there, with their white faces to the night. Surely she
might have thought of some remark less idiotic to make to herself, at
such a time.

He was explaining to her things about the air service. It seemed he had
had experience in flying--some relation of his with whom he had spent a
holiday last summer.

It would mean his getting out quickly. He seemed quite eager to be gone.

"Isn't it rather dangerous work?" she asked. She felt it was a footling
question even as she asked it. Her brain had become stodgy.

"Nothing like as dangerous as being in the Infantry," he answered. "And
that would be my only other alternative. Besides I get out of the
drilling." He laughed. "I should hate being shouted at and ordered
about by a husky old sergeant."

They neither spoke again till they came to the bridge, from the other
side of which the busses started.

"I may not see you again before I go," he said. "Look after Mary. I
shall try to persuade her to go down to her aunt in Hampshire. It's
rather a bit of luck, as it turns out, the paper being finished with. I
shouldn't have quite known what to do."

He had stopped at the corner. They were still beneath the shadow of the
trees. Quite unconsciously she put her face up; and as if i