."

She kissed her hand to him at the door, and was gone.

It was now that Doggie began to hate himself. For all the time that
Peggy had been running on, eager to convince him that his imputation
of aloofness from the war was undeserved, the voice of one who,
knowing its splendours and its terrors, had pierced to the heart of
its mysteries, ran in his ears.

"_Leur gaiete fait peur._"

CHAPTER XIX

The X-rays showed the tiniest splinter of bone in Doggie's thigh. The
surgeon fished it up and the clean wound healed rapidly. The gloomy
Penworthy's prognostication had not come true. Doggie would not stump
about at ease on a wooden leg; but in all probability would soon find
himself back in the firing line--a prospect which brought great cheer
to Penworthy. Also to Doggie. For, in spite of the charm of the pretty
hospital, the health-giving sea air, the long rest for body and
nerves, life seemed flat and unprofitable.

He had written a gay, irreproachable letter to Jeanne, to which
Jeanne, doubtless thinking it the last word of the episode, had not
replied. Loyalty to Peggy forbade further thought of Jeanne. He must
henceforward think of Peggy and her sturdy faithfulness as hard as he
could. But the more he thought, the more remote did Peggy seem. Of
course the publicity of the interview had invested it with a certain
constraint, knocked out of it any approach to sentimentality or
romance. They had not even kissed. They had spent most of the time
arguing from different points of view. They had been near to
quarrelling. It was outrageous of him to criticize her; yet how could
he help it? The mere fact of striving to exalt her was a criticism.

Indeed they were far apart. Into the sensitive soul of Doggie the war
in all its meaning had paused. The soul of Peggy had remained
untouched. To her, in her sheltered corner of England, it was a
ghastly accident, like a railway collision blocking the traffic on her
favourite line. For the men of her own class who took part in it, it
was a brave adventure; for the common soldier a sad but patriotic
necessity. If circumstances had allowed her to go forth into the
war-world as nurse or canteen helper at a London terminus, or motor
driver in France, her horizon would have broadened. But the contact
with realities into which her dilettante little war activities brought
her was too slight to make the deep impression. In her heart, as far
as she revealed herself to Doggie, s