questions--all I know is that I move daily with men who
have everything to live for who, nevertheless, are urged by an
unconscious magnanimity to die. I don't think any of our dead pity
themselves--but they would have done so if they had faltered in their
choice. One lives only from sunrise to sunrise, but there's a more real
happiness in this brief living than I ever knew before, because it is so
exactingly worth while.

Thank you again for your kindness.
Very sincerely yours,
C.D.

The suggestion that we might all meet in London in January, 1917, was a
hope rather than an expectation. We received a cable from France on
Sunday, December 17th, 1916, and left New York on December 30th. We were
met in London by the two sailor-sons, who were expecting appointments at
any moment, and Coningsby arrived late in the evening of January 13th.
He was unwell when he arrived, having had a near touch of pneumonia. The
day before he left the front he had been in action, with a temperature
of 104. There were difficulties about getting his leave at the exact
time appointed, but these he overcame by exchanging leave with a
brother-officer. He travelled from the Front all night in a windowless
train, and at Calais was delayed by a draft of infantry which he had to
take over to England. The consequence of this delay was that the meeting
at the railway station, of which he had so long dreamed, did not come
off. We spent a long day, going from station to station, misled by
imperfect information as to the arrival of troop trains. At Victoria
Station we saw two thousand troops arrive on leave, men caked with
trench-mud, but he was not among them. We reluctantly returned to our
hotel in the late afternoon and gave up expecting him. There was all the
time a telegram at the hotel from him, giving the exact place and time
of his arrival, but it was not delivered until it was too late to meet
him. He arrived at ten o'clock, and at the same time his two brothers,
who had been summoned in the morning to Southampton, entered the hotel,
having been granted special leave to return to London. A night's rest
did wonders for Coningsby, and the next day his spirits were as high as
in the old days of joyous holiday. During the next eight days we lived
at a tense pitch of excitement. We went to theatres, dined in
restaurants, met friends, and heard from his lips a hundred details of
his life which could not be co