to one another. Until then . . .
well just give it a miss in baulk, old man."

Vane regarded her curiously. "If last night and this afternoon had
happened before the war, I wonder what your decision would have been?"

"Does it matter?" she answered gently. "Before the war is just a
different age." For a while she was silent; then she drew a deep
breath. "Don't you feel it as I feel it?" she whispered. "The bigness
of it, the wonder of it. Underneath all the horror, underlying all the
vileness--the splendour of it all. The glory of human endurance. . . .
People wondered that I could stand it--I with my idealism. But it
seems to me that out of the sordid brutality an ideal has been born
which is almost the greatest the world has ever known. Oh! Derek,
we've just got to try to keep it alive."

"It's the devil," said Vane whimsically. "Jove! lady dear, isn't the
blue of the sky and the sea and the gold of the sand just crying out to
be the setting of a lovers' paradise? Aren't we here alone just hidden
from the world, while the very gulls themselves are screaming: 'Kiss
her, kiss her?' And then the fairy princess, instead of being the
fairy princess to the wounded warrior, orders him to go back and look
for work. It's cruel. I had hoped for tender love and pity, and
behold I have found a Labour Bureau."

Margaret laughed. "You dear! But you understand?" She knelt beside
him on the sand, and her face was very tender.

"I understand," answered Vane gravely. "But, oh! my lady, I hope
you're not building fairy castles on what's going to happen after the
war. I'm afraid my faith in my brother man is a very, very small
flame."

"All the more reason why we should keep it alight," she cried fiercely.
"Derek, we can't let all this hideous mutilation and death go for
nothing afterwards."

"You dear optimist," Vane smiled at her eager, glowing face so close to
his own. "Do you suppose that we and others like us will have any say
in the matter?"

She beat her hands together. "Derek, I hate you when you talk like
that. You've got it in you to do big things--I feel it. You mustn't
drift like you did before the war. You've got to fight, and others
like you have got to fight, for everything that makes life worth living
in our glorious, wonderful England."

"Would the staff be a little more explicit in their Operation Orders,
please?" murmured Vane. "Whom do you propose I should engage in mortal
combat