ecidedly better. I
shouldn't wonder if he'd have to go." Almost as if the idea had been
pleasant to him.

And Frances: "Well, I suppose if we had thirteen sons instead of three,
we ought to send them all."

"Positively," said Anthony. "I believe I'd let Dorothy go out now if she
insisted."

"Oh, no, I think we might be allowed to keep Dorothy."

She pondered. "I suppose one will get used to it in time. I grudged
giving Nicky at first. I don't grudge him now. I believe if he went out
to-morrow, and was killed, I should only feel how splendid it was
of him."

"I wish poor Dorothy could feel that way about Drayton."

"She does--really. But that's different. Frank had to go. It was his
profession. Nicky's gone in of his own free will."

He did not remind her that Frank's free will had counted in his choice
of a profession.

"Once," said Frances, "volunteers didn't count. Now they count more than
the whole Army put together."

They were silent, each thinking the same thing; each knowing that sooner
or later they must speak of it.

Frances was the braver of the two. She spoke first.

"There's Michael. I don't know what to make of him. He doesn't seem to
want to go."

That was the vulnerable place; there they had ached unbearably in
secret. It was no use trying to hide it any longer. Something must be
done about Michael.

"I wish you'd say something to him, Anthony."

"I would if I were going myself. But how can I?"

"When he knows that you'd have gone before any of them if you were young
enough."

"I can't say anything. You'll have to."

"No, Anthony. I can't ask him to go any more than you can. Nicky is the
only one of us who has any right to."

"Or Dorothy. Dorothy'd be in the trenches now if she had her way."

"I can't think how he can bear to look at Dorothy."

But in the end she did say something.

She went to him in his room upstairs where he worked now, hiding himself
away every evening out of their sight. "Almost," she thought, "as if he
were ashamed of himself."

Her heart ached as she looked at him; at the fair, serious beauty of his
young face; at the thick masses of his hair that would not stay as they
were brushed back, but fell over his forehead; it was still yellow, and
shining as it shone when he was a little boy.

He was writing. She could see the short, irregular lines of verse on the
white paper. He covered them with his hand as she came in lest she
should see them. That hurt