e's not very badly wounded?"

"Elisabeth doesn't give any particulars in her letter. I can't
understand her," Sara continued, her brows contracting in a puzzled
fashion. "She seems so calm about it. She has always hated the idea of
Tim's soldiering, yet now, although she's lost her husband and her son
is wounded, she's taking it finely."

Selwyn looked up from filling his pipe.

"She's answering to the call--like every one else," he observed quietly.

"No." Sara shook her head. "I don't feel as though it were that. It's
something more individual. Perhaps"--thoughtfully--"it's pride of a
kind. The sort of impression I have is that she's so proud--so proud of
Geoffrey's fine death, and of Tim's winning the Military Cross, that it
has compensated in some way."

"The war's full of surprises," remarked Molly reflectively. "I never
was so astonished in my life as when I found that Lester Kent's
wife believed him to be a model of all the virtues! I wrote and told
you--didn't I, Sara?--that he was sent to Oldhampton Hospital? He got
smashed up, driving a motor ambulance, you know."

"Yes, you wrote and said that he died in hospital."

"Well, his wife came to see him, with her little boy. She was the
sweetest thing, and so plucky. 'My dear,' she said to me, after it was
all over, 'I hope you'll find a husband as dear and good. He was so
loyal and true--and now that he's gone, I shall always have that to
remember!'" Molly's eyes had grown very big and bright. "Oh! Sara," she
went on, catching her breath a little, "supposing you hadn't brought
me home--that night, she would have had no beautiful memory to help her
now."

"And yet the memory is an utterly false one--though I suppose it will
help her just the same! It's knowing the truth that hurts, sometimes."
And Sara's lips twisted a little. "What a droll world it is--of shame
and truth all mixed up--the ugly and the beautiful all lumped together!"

"And just now," put in Selwyn quietly, "it's so full of beauty."

"Beauty?" exclaimed both girls blankly.

Selwyn nodded, his eyes luminous.

"Isn't heroism beautiful--and self-sacrifice?" he said. "And this war's
full of it. Sometimes, when I read the newspapers, I think God Himself
must be surprised at the splendid things the men He made have done."

Sara turned away, swept by the recollection of one man she knew who had
nothing splendid, nothing glorious, to his credit. Almost invariably,
any discussion of the war en