r eyes, swimming in tears.

'Isn't it marvellous, how she's thought of everything--done
everything?'

Elizabeth had not been in his mind, but he understood the _amende_
offered and was deeply touched.

'Yes, she's a wonderful creature. Let her care for you, Pamela, dear
Pamela!'

He lifted her hand to his lips, and put his arm round her. She leant
against him, and he gently kissed her cheek. So Love came to them,
but in its most tragic dress, veiled and dumb, with haggard eyes of
grief.

Then Pamela tried to tell him all that she herself had understood of
the gallant deed, the bit of 'observation work' in the course of
which Desmond had received his wound. He had gone out with another
subaltern, a sergeant, and a telephonist, creeping by night over No
Man's Land to a large shell-hole, close upon an old crater where a
German outpost of some thirty men had found shelter. They had
remained there for forty-eight hours--unrelieved--listening and
telephoning. Then having given all necessary information to the
artillery Headquarters which had sent them out, they started on the
return journey. But they were seen and fired on. Desmond might have
escaped but for his determined endeavours to bring in the Sergeant,
who was the first of them to fall. A German sniper hidden in a
fragment of ruin caught the boy just outside the British line; he
fell actually upon the trench.

Desmond had been the leader all through, said Pamela; his Colonel
said he was 'the pluckiest, dearest fellow'--he failed 'in nothing
you ever asked him for.'

Just such a story as comes home, night after night, and week after
week, from the fighting line! Nothing remarkable in it, except,
perhaps, the personal quality of the boy who had sacrificed his
life. Arthur Chicksands, with three years of the war behind him,
felt that he knew it by heart--could have repeated it, almost in his
sleep, and each time with a different name.

'The other lieutenant who was with him,' said Pamela, 'told us he
was in splendid spirits the day before; and then at night, just
before they started, Desmond was very quiet, and they said to each
other that whatever happened that night they never expected to see
England again; and each promised the other that the one who
survived, if either did, would take messages home. Desmond told him
he was to tell me, if he was killed--that he'd "had a splendid
life"--and lived it "_all out_." "She's not to think of it as cut
short. I've