eggie Dacre, Leonard Boyce--how many more
could I not add to the list? All those little burial grounds in
France--which France, with her exquisite sense of beauty, has assigned
as British soil for all time--all those burial grounds, each bearing
its modest leaden inscription--some, indeed, heart-rendingly inscribed
"Sacred to the memory of six unknown British soldiers killed in
action"--are monuments not to be bedewed with tears of lamentation.
From the young lives that have gone there springs imperishable love and
strength and wisdom--and the vast determination to use that love and
strength and wisdom for the great good of mankind. If there is a God of
Battles, guiding, in His inscrutable omniscience, the hosts that fight
for the eternal verities--for all that man in his straining towards the
Godhead has striven for since the world began--the men who have died
will come into their glory, and those who have mourned will share
exultant in the victory. From before the beginning of Time Mithra has
ever been triumphant and his foot on the throat of Ahriman.

It was in February, 1915, that I began to expand my diary into this
narrative,--nearly two years ago. We have passed through the darkness.
The Dawn is breaking. Sursum corda.

I was going to tell you about Betty when Phyllis, with her furs and
happiness and hymn-books, interrupted me. I should like to tell you
now. But who am I to speak of the mysteries in the soul of a great
woman? But I must try. And I can tell you more now than I could on
Christmas Day.

Last night she insisted on seeing the New Year in with me. If I had
told Marigold that I proposed to sit up after midnight, he would have
come in at ten o'clock, picked me up with finger and thumb as any
Brobdingnagian might have picked up Gulliver, and put me straightway to
bed. But Betty made the announcement in her airily imperious way, and
Marigold, craven before Betty and Mrs. Marigold, said "Very good,
madam," as if Dr. Cliffe and his orders had never existed. At half past
ten she packed off the happy and, I must confess, the somewhat sleepy
Phyllis, and sat down, in her old attitude by the side of my chair, in
front of the fire, and opened her dear heart to me.

I had guessed what her proud soul had suffered during the last six
months. One who loved her as I did could see it in her face, in her
eyes, in the little hardening of her voice, in odd little betrayals of
feverishness in her manner. But the outsid