re too, Margaret; I wonder how you ever put up with a brainless sort
of ass like me."

"Because I liked you," she answered quietly, and suddenly it struck
Vane, almost with a feeling of surprise, that the girl sitting beside
him was more than attractive. He wondered why he had let her slip so
easily out of his life. And the train of thought once started seemed a
not unpleasant one. . . . "You'll get it back soon, Derek--your sense
of proportion. You've got to."

"So that I can help build the new Heaven and the new Earth," he laughed.

"So that you may help build the new Heaven and the new Earth," she
repeated gravely rising to her feet. "I must go back or I'll miss my
tea."

"Have a cup with me in the village." Vane scrambled up and fell into
step beside her. They passed Monsieur still snoring, and Madame
nodding peacefully over her knitting, and crossed the deserted
promenade. Then in silence they walked up into the main street of the
little town in search of a tea shop.

"Do you realise, Margaret," he remarked as they sat down at a small
marble-topped table, "that I haven't seen or spoken to a woman for six
months? . . . Heaven help us! Aren't there any cakes?"

"Of course not," laughed Margaret, "nor milk, nor sugar. There's a war
on up the road. You want about ten drops of that liquid saccharine."
In the sunny street outside, soldiers in various stages of
convalescence, strolled aimlessly about. An occasional motor car,
containing officers--on duty, of course--slowed down at the corner
opposite and disgorged its load. A closer inspection of one of them
might have revealed a few suspicious looking gashes in the upholstery
and holes in the mud-guards. Of course--shrapnel--but, then shrapnel
did not occur by the sea. And on what duty could officers from the
shrapnel area be engaged on at Paris Plage? . . . However, let us be
discreet in all things.

In a few hours that shrapnel scarred car would be carrying its freight
back to Boulogne, where a table at the restaurant Mony had already been
secured for dinner. Then back through the night, to call at various
dilapidated farms and holes in the ground, in the area where shrapnel
and crumps are not unknown. . . . But just for a few brief hours the
occupants of the car were going to soak themselves in the Waters of
Forgetfulness; they were going to live--even as the tripper from the
slums lives his little span at Margate. And they were no whit les