and
a dull job it is!" Leila Lynch! Women didn't get younger, and he
suspected her of being older than himself. But he remembered agreeably
her white shoulders and that turn of her neck when she looked at you with
those big grey eyes of hers. Only a five-day acquaintanceship, but they
had crowded much into it as one did in a strange land. The episode had
been a green and dangerous spot, like one of those bright mossy bits of
bog when you were snipe-shooting, to set foot on which was to let you
down up to the neck, at least. Well, there was none of that danger now,
for her husband was dead-poor chap! It would be nice, in these dismal
days, when nobody spent any time whatever except in the service of the
country, to improve his powers of service by a few hours' recreation in
her society. 'What humbugs we are!' he thought: 'To read the newspapers
and the speeches you'd believe everybody thought of nothing but how to
get killed for the sake of the future. Drunk on verbiage! What heads
and mouths we shall all have when we wake up some fine morning with Peace
shining in at the window! Ah! If only we could; and enjoy ourselves
again!' And he gazed at the moon. She was dipping already, reeling away
into the dawn. Water carts and street sweepers had come out into the
glimmer; sparrows twittered in the eaves. The city was raising a strange
unknown face to the grey light, shuttered and deserted as Babylon. Jimmy
Fort tapped out his pipe, sighed, and got into bed.

2

Coming off duty at that very moment, Leila Lynch decided to have her
hour's walk before she went home. She was in charge of two wards, and as
a rule took the day watches; but some slight upset had given her this
extra spell. She was, therefore, at her worst, or perhaps at her best,
after eighteen hours in hospital. Her cheeks were pale, and about her
eyes were little lines, normally in hiding. There was in this face a
puzzling blend of the soft and hard, for the eyes, the rather full lips,
and pale cheeks, were naturally soft; but they were hardened by the
self-containment which grows on women who have to face life for
themselves, and, conscious of beauty, intend to keep it, in spite of age.
Her figure was contradictory, also; its soft modelling a little too
rigidified by stays. In this desert of the dawn she let her long blue
overcoat flap loose, and swung her hat on a finger, so that her
light-brown, touched-up hair took the morning breeze wi