ou didn't choose your
religion; it chose you.

And on Saturday the letters came: John's letter enclosing the wire from
the War Office, and the letter that Nicky's Colonel had written
to Anthony.

Nicky was killed.

Michael took in the fact, and the date (it was last Sunday). There were
some official regrets, but they made no impression on him. John's letter
made no impression on him. Last Sunday Nicky was killed.

He had not even unfolded the Colonel's letter yet. The close black lines
showed through the thin paper. Their closeness repelled him. He did not
want to know how his brother had died; at least not yet. He was afraid
of the Colonel's letter. He felt that by simply not reading it he could
put off the unbearable turn of the screw.

He was shivering with cold. He drew up his chair to the wide, open
hearth-place where there was no fire; he held out his hands over it. The
wind swept down the chimney and made him colder; and he felt sick.

He had been sitting there about an hour when Suzanne came in and asked
him if he would like a little fire. He heard himself saying, "No, thank
you," in a hard voice. The idea of warmth and comfort was disagreeable
to him. Suzanne asked him then if he had had bad news? And he heard
himself saying: "Yes," and Suzanne trying, trying very gently, to
persuade him that it was perhaps only that Monsieur Nicky was wounded?

"No? _Then_," said the old woman, "he is killed." And she began to cry.

Michael couldn't stand that. He got up and opened the door into the
outer room, and she passed through before him, sobbing and whimpering.
Her voice came to him through the closed door in a sharp cry telling
Jean that Monsieur Nicky was dead, and Jean's voice came, hushing her.

Then he heard the feet of the old man shuffling across the kitchen
floor, and the outer door opening and shutting softly; and through the
windows at the back of the room, he saw, without heeding, as the
Belgians passed and went up into the fields together, weeping, leaving
him alone.

They had remembered.

It was then that Michael read the Colonel's letter, and learned the
manner of his brother's death: "... About a quarter past four o'clock in
the afternoon his battalion was being pressed back, when he rallied his
men and led them in as gallant an attack as was ever made by so small a
number in this War. He was standing on the enemy's parapet when he was
shot through the heart and fell. By a quarter to five th