the beauty of the evening--of this old earth, which takes no account
of the perishing of men--and Nelly's warm life beside him, hanging upon
his, perhaps already containing within it the mysterious promise of
another life, had suddenly brought upon him a tremor of soul--an inward
shudder. Did he really believe in existence after death--in a meeting
again, in some dim other scene, if they were violently parted now? He
had been confirmed while at school. His parents were Church people of a
rather languid type, and it seemed the natural thing to do. Since then
he had occasionally taken the Communion, largely to please an elder
school-friend, who was ardently devout, and was now a Chaplain on the
Western front. But what did it really mean to him?--what would it mean
to _her_--if she were left alone? Images passed through his mind--the
sights of the trenches--shattered and dying bodies. What was the
_soul_?--had it really an independent life? _Something_ there was in
men--quite rough and common men--something revealed by war and the
sufferings of war--so splendid, so infinitely beyond anything he had
ever dreamed of in ordinary life, that to think of it roused in him a
passion of hidden feeling--perhaps adoration--but vague and
speechless--adoration of he knew not what. He did not speak easily of
his feeling, even to his young wife, to whom marriage had so closely, so
ineffably bound him. But as he lay on the grass looking up at
her--smiling--obeying her command of silence, his thoughts ranged
irrepressibly. Supposing he fell, and she lived on--years and years--to
be an old woman? Old! Nelly? Impossible! He put his hand gently on the
slender foot, and felt the pulsing life in it. 'Dearest!' she murmured
at his touch, and their eyes met tenderly.

'I should be content--' he thought--'if we could just live _this_ life
out! I don't believe I should want another life. But to go--and leave
her; to go--just at the beginning--before one knows anything--before one
has finished anything--'

And again his eyes wandered from her to the suffusion of light and
colour on the lake. 'How could anyone ever want anything better than
this earth--this life--at its best--if only one were allowed a full and
normal share of it!' And he thought again, almost with a leap of
exasperation, of those dead and mangled men--out there--in France. Who
was responsible--God?--or man? But man's will is--must be--something
dependent--something included in God