realized suddenly how much I
loved my work, and when I got back to my quarters that night and saw my
men swinging in from a route march I could have howled like a dog at
leaving them. Though I say it who shouldn't, there wasn't a better
division in the Army.

One morning a few days later I picked up Mary in Amiens. I always liked
the place, for after the dirt of the Somme it was a comfort to go there
for a bath and a square meal, and it had the noblest church that the
hand of man ever built for God. It was a clear morning when we started
from the boulevard beside the railway station; and the air smelt of
washed streets and fresh coffee, and women were going marketing and the
little trams ran clanking by, just as in any other city far from the
sound of guns. There was very little khaki or horizon-blue about, and I
remember thinking how completely Amiens had got out of the war-zone.
Two months later it was a different story.

To the end I shall count that day as one of the happiest in my life.
Spring was in the air, though the trees and fields had still their
winter colouring. A thousand good fresh scents came out of the earth,
and the larks were busy over the new furrows. I remember that we ran up
a little glen, where a stream spread into pools among sallows, and the
roadside trees were heavy with mistletoe. On the tableland beyond the
Somme valley the sun shone like April. At Beauvais we lunched badly in
an inn--badly as to food, but there was an excellent Burgundy at two
francs a bottle. Then we slipped down through little flat-chested
townships to the Seine, and in the late afternoon passed through St
Germains forest. The wide green spaces among the trees set my fancy
dwelling on that divine English countryside where Mary and I would one
day make our home. She had been in high spirits all the journey, but
when I spoke of the Cotswolds her face grew grave.

'Don't let us speak of it, Dick,' she said. 'It's too happy a thing and
I feel as if it would wither if we touched it. I don't let myself think
of peace and home, for it makes me too homesick ... I think we shall
get there some day, you and I ... but it's a long road to the
Delectable Mountains, and Faithful, you know, has to die first ...
There is a price to be paid.'

The words sobered me.

'Who is our Faithful?' I asked.

'I don't know. But he was the best of the Pilgrims.'

Then, as if a veil had lifted, her mood changed, and when we came
through the s