nd howl. . . ." And Vane, looking up into her face, saw that her
eyes were a little misty. . . .

Gradually the ward settled down into silence. Right at the other end a
man was groaning feebly; while just opposite, looking ghastly in the
dim light, a boy was staring round the tent with eyes that did not see.
For hours on end he lay unconscious, breathing the rattling breath of
the badly gassed; then suddenly he would lift his head, and his eyes,
fixed and staring, would slowly turn from bed to bed. He looked as a
man looks who is walking in his sleep, and Vane knew he was very near
the Great Divide. He had been hit in the chest by a piece of shell,
and a bit of his coat impregnated with mustard gas had been driven into
his lungs. . . . Every now and then Margaret passed noiselessly down
the centre between the two rows of beds. Once she lent over Vane and
he closed his eyes pretending to be asleep. But every time as she came
to the boy opposite she stopped and looked at him anxiously. Once she
was joined by a doctor, and Vane heard their muttered conversation . . .

"I can't get him to take his medicine, Doctor. He doesn't seem able to
do anything."

"It doesn't much matter, Nurse," he whispered--why is it that the
sick-room whisper seems to travel as far as the voice of the
Sergeant-Major on parade? "He won't get through to-night, and I'm
afraid we can't do anything."

The doctor turned away, and Margaret went to the end of the tent and
sat down at her table. A reading lamp threw a light on her face, and
for a while Vane watched her. Then his eyes came back to the boy
opposite, and rested on him curiously. He was unconscious once again,
and it suddenly struck Vane as strange that whereas, up in front, he
had seen death and mutilation in every possible and impossible
form--that though he had seen men hit by a shell direct, and one man
crushed by a Tank--yet he had never been impressed with the same sense
of the utter futility of war as now, in face of this boy dying in the
bed opposite. To have come so far and then to pay the big price; it
was so hard--so very pitiful; and Vane turned over to shut out the
sight. He felt suddenly frightened of the thing that was coming nearer
and nearer to the dying boy; furious at the inability of the science
which had struck him down to save him. . . .

Vane closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but sleep was far away that
night. Whenever he opened them he saw Margare