er side. The Germans couldn't
get back, because we were sprinkling the whole place with shrapnel. We
couldn't advance for similar reasons. Simcox just lay in his shell hole.
He tied up his leg somehow. He had some brandy in a flask as well as his
iron rations. But he hadn't much tobacco. There were only two cigarettes
in his own case. However, he had the other case, the one he picked up.
There were nearly twenty in it Also there was--I say, at this point the
story gets sloppy."

"Never mind," I said. "Go on. What else was in the cigarette case? A
farewell letter to a loving wife? Love to little Willie and a text of
Scripture?"

"Not so bad as that. A photo of a girl. He showed it to me when he told
me the story."

"Good looking girl?"

"Very. Large eyes--sort of tender, you know, and appealing; and a
gentle, innocent face, and a mouth----"

"I suppose," I said, "that these raptures are necessary if I'm to
understand the story. Otherwise, you may skip them."

"Can't possibly skip them," said Daintree. "The whole point of
the story depends on your realizing the sort of girl she was.
Pathetic--that's the word I want. Looked at you out of the photo as if
she was a poor, lonely, but uncommonly fetching little thing, who wanted
a strong, true man to shelter her from the evil world. She was got up
in some sort of fancy dress which kind of heightened the effect. I don't
altogether profess to understand what happened, though my wife says she
does. But Simcox in a sort of way fell in love with her. That's not the
way he put it He didn't feel that she was just an ordinary girl--the
sort one falls in love with. She was--well, he didn't think of her as
flesh and blood--more a kind of vision--spiritual, you know."

"Angel?" I said.

"That sort of thing. You know. That was the idea that gripped Simcox
while he lay there in the shell hole. Stars came out at night and Simcox
felt that she was looking down at him. In the day he used to lie and
gaze at her. When he thought it was all up with him and that he couldn't
live, he seemed to hear her voice--I say, you ought to hear my
wife telling this part of the story. Simcox wouldn't tell it to me,
naturally; but he seems to have enlarged on it a good deal to her.
He says that only for that photo he'd have given in and just died. I
daresay he wouldn't really, but he thinks he would. Anyhow, he didn't He
stuck it out and his leg didn't hurt nearly as much as he expected. He
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