e the unforgettable, immemorial kiss, the
clasp of your hands, the rising and falling of your bosom, like a wave
beneath a sea-bird, like a sea-bird above a wave, shall be with me always,
even to the end of time and beyond it.

For there are many loves, but one Love.

XXX

A long-legged, thinnish officer, riding a khaki-coloured bicycle over a
dusty stretch of shrapnel-raked ground, carrying a riding-whip tucked
under his arm and wearing steel jack-spurs, might have been considered a
laughter-provoking object elsewhere, but the point was lost for
Gueldersdorp. He got off his metal steed amongst the zipping bullets, and
came over to the little group of Town Guards that were gathered round
Saxham, who had just ridden up, and their prostrate comrade, who writhed
and groaned lustily.

"You have a casualty. Serious?"

Saxham looked up, and his hard glance softened in recognition of the
Chief.

"I'll tell you in a moment, sir."

The earth-stained khaki jacket was torn down the left side and drenched
with ominous red. A little pool of the same colour had gathered under the
sufferer.

"He looks gassly, don't him?" muttered one of the Town Guardsmen, the
Swiss baker who was not Swiss.

"Makes plenty of noise," said the County Court clerk hypercritically, "for
a dying man."

"Oh Lord! oh Lord!"

The subject had bellowed with sonority, testifying at least to the
possession of an uninjured diaphragm, as Saxham begun to cut away the
jacket.

"Oh, come now!" said a brisk, pleasant, incisive voice that sent an
electric shock volting through the presumably shattered frame. "That's not
so bad!"

"I told you so," muttered the County Court clerk to the Swiss baker.

"You remember me, Colonel?"

Haggard, despairing eyes rolled up at the Chief appealingly. He had met
the gaze of those oyster-orbs before. He recognised Alderman Brooker,
proprietor of the grocery stores in Market Square, victim of the outrage
perpetrated on a sentry near the Convent on a certain memorable night in
October last.

"Yes, my man. Anything I can do?" He knelt down beside the prostrate
form.

"You can tell my country, sir, that I died willingly," panted the
moribund.

"With pleasure, when you're dead. But you're not yet, you know, Brooker."
His keen glance was following the run of the Doctor's surgical scissors
through the brown stuff and revelling in discovery. And Saxham's set,
square face and stern eyes were for once all alight