cheer up! I understand."

It was nearly ten o'clock that evening before he reached home, motoring
back from the route march. His physical tiredness was abated, for he had
partaken of a snack and a whisky and soda at the hotel; but mentally he
was in a curious mood. His body felt appeased, his spirit hungry.
Tonight he had a yearning, not for his wife's kisses, but for her
understanding. He wanted to go to her and say: "I've learnt a lot
to-day-found out things I never thought of. Life's a wonderful thing,
Kate, a thing one can't live all to oneself; a thing one shares with
everybody, so that when another suffers, one suffers too. It's come to
me that what one has doesn't matter a bit--it's what one does, and how
one sympathises with other people. It came to me in the most
extraordinary vivid way, when I was on that jury, watching that poor
little rat of a soldier in his trap; it's the first time I've ever
felt--the--the spirit of Christ, you know. It's a wonderful thing,
Kate--wonderful! We haven't been close--really close, you and I, so that
we each understand what the other is feeling. It's all in that, you
know; understanding--sympathy--it's priceless. When I saw that poor
little devil taken down and sent back to his regiment to begin his
sorrows all over again--wanting his wife, thinking and thinking of her
just as you know I would be thinking and wanting you, I felt what an
awful outside sort of life we lead, never telling each other what we
really think and feel, never being really close. I daresay that little
chap and his wife keep nothing from each other--live each other's lives.
That's what we ought to do. Let's get to feeling that what really
matters is--understanding and loving, and not only just saying it as we
all do, those fellows on the jury, and even that poor devil of a
judge--what an awful life judging one's fellow-creatures.

"When I left that poor little Tommy this morning, and ever since, I've
longed to get back here quietly to you and tell you about it, and make a
beginning. There's something wonderful in this, and I want you to feel
it as I do, because you mean such a lot to me."

This was what he wanted to say to his wife, not touching, or kissing her,
just looking into her eyes, watching them soften and glow as they surely
must, catching the infection of his new ardour. And he felt unsteady,
fearfully unsteady with the desire to say it all as it should be said:
swiftly, quietly,