sun.

"Hello, sun!" cried Marjorie.

"Hello, clouds!" cried Leonard.

"Hello, old sea gulls!" cried Marjorie, beginning to sneeze.

"God, but I feel fit; I feel glorious! Don't you, Marjie?"

"Don't I, though! I feel glorious. O God!" cried Marjorie, who did not
know whether that was swearing or praying, and did not care.

Leonard ran his hands through the chill, warm sand, and watched a huge
black spider promenading with bustling importance up his arm.

"The female spider eats the male as soon as he fertilizes the eggs, but
he has to just the same," said Leonard, dreamily.

"Let's kill her," said Marjorie.

"No."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"She's a cannibal," said Marjorie.

"No, it's her instinct," said Leonard.

He opened an alleyway for the spider in the sand, and, with his head
down close, watched it hustling away. "It's the same with us; we know we
have every chance of being killed in this war, and we have to go, and
we're glad to. It's not courage or sacrifice; it's instinct."

"You think so, Leonard?"

"It's not nice to lie alongside of a man you've killed and watch him
die," said Leonard, inconsistently, eyes looking down into the sand,
head pillowed on his arm.

"Did you have to, Len?"

"I didn't exactly mean to kill him. He was wounded," murmured Leonard,
raising little white pools in the sand with his nostrils. "We had a
rotten day and had taken a small position which didn't amount to
anything when we got it. _Wasn't_ I in a nasty sulk! Some of my green
men had funked just at the crucial moment, and I had all but shot one.
The ground was covered with wounded. Couldn't tell theirs from ours.
Awful mess. I was coming back across the field over dead bodies, and
cursing every one I stumbled across. I suppose I felt pretty sick. I saw
a helmet gleaming in some burnt shrubbery. It was a nice shiny one, with
an eagle crest. It occurred to me you'd written me to send you one,
'because all the girls had them'--remember?"

Leonard rolled over close beside her and his head went down into the
sand again.

"I went to pick it up, but it seems I got something else with it. A
great blonde fellow in gray, all powdered with dust and bleeding,--Jove!
how he was bleeding!--came up with it. It surprised me and he managed to
knife me, and over I went, on top of him. I had my pistol cocked, and I
let him have it right in the chest. I must have fainted, because when I
came to I was on my back and the moon was shin