ratian had long gone back to their respective hospitals, and
she and her father had the house to themselves. She received many
letters from Cyril which she carried about with her and read on her way
to and from the hospital; and every other day she wrote to him. He was
not yet in the firing line; his letters were descriptive of his men, his
food, or the natives, or reminiscent of Kestrel; hers descriptive of
washing up, or reminiscent of Kestrel. But in both there was always some
little word of the longing within them.

It was towards the end of August when she had the letter which said that
he had been moved up. From now on he would be in hourly danger! That
evening after dinner she did not go to sleep in the chair, but sat under
the open window, clenching her hands, and reading "Pride and Prejudice"
without understanding a word. While she was so engaged her father came
up and said:

"Captain Fort, Nollie. Will you give him some coffee? I'm afraid I must
go out."

When he had gone, Noel looked at her visitor drinking his coffee. He had
been out there, too, and he was alive; with only a little limp. The
visitor smiled and said:

"What were you thinking about when we came in?"

"Only the war."

"Any news of him?"

Noel frowned, she hated to show her feelings.

"Yes! he's gone to the Front. Won't you have a cigarette?"

"Thanks. Will you?"

"I want one awfully. I think sitting still and waiting is more dreadful
than anything in the world."

"Except, knowing that others are waiting. When I was out there I used to
worry horribly over my mother. She was ill at the time. The cruelest
thing in war is the anxiety of people about each other--nothing touches
that."

The words exactly summed up Noel's hourly thought. He said nice things,
this man with the long legs and the thin brown bumpy face!

"I wish I were a man," she said, "I think women have much the worst time
in the war. Is your mother old?" But of course she was old why he was
old himself!

"She died last Christmas."

"Oh! I'm so sorry!"

"You lost your mother when you were a babe, didn't you?"

"Yes. That's her portrait." At the end of the room, hanging on a strip
of black velvet was a pastel, very faint in colouring, as though faded,
of a young woman, with an eager, sweet face, dark eyes, and bent a little
forward, as if questioning her painter. Fort went up to it.

"It's not a bit like you. But she must have been a very s