e before, Michael, if you'd wanted me."

They were sitting together now, on the settle by the hearth-place.

"I can't understand your being able to think of me," he said.

"Because of Nicky? If I haven't got Nicky it's all the more reason why I
should think of his people."

He looked up. "I say--how are they? Mother and Father?"

"They're very brave.

"It's worse for them than it is for me," she said. "What they can't bear
is your going."

"Mother got my letter, then?"

"Yes. This morning."

"What did she say?"

"She said: 'Oh, no. _Not_ Michael.'

"It was a good thing you wrote, though. Your letter made her cry. It
made even Dorothy cry. They hadn't been able to, before."

"I should have thought if they could stand Nicky's going--"

"That was different. They know it was different."

"Do you suppose _I_ don't know how different it was? They mean I funked
it and Nicky didn't."

"They mean that Nicky got what he wanted when he went, and that there
was nothing else he could have done so well, except flying, or
engineering."

"It comes to the same thing, Nicky simply wasn't afraid."

"Yes, Michael, he _was_ afraid."

"What _of_?"

"He was most awfully afraid of seeing suffering."

"Well, so am I. And I'm afraid of suffering myself too. I'm afraid of
the whole blessed thing from beginning to end."

"That's because you keep on seeing the whole blessed thing from
beginning to end. Nicky only saw little bits of it. The bits he liked.
Machine-guns working beautifully, and shells dropping in the right
places, and trenches being taken.

"And then, remember--Nicky hadn't so much to give up."

"He had you."

"Oh, no. He knew that was the way to keep me."

"Ronny--if Nicky had been like me could he have kept you?"

She considered it.

"Yes--if he could have been himself too."

"He couldn't, you see. He never could have felt like that."

"I don't say He could."

"Well--the awful thing is 'feeling like that.'"

"And the magnificent thing is 'feeling like that,' and going all the
same. Everybody knows that but you, Michael."

"Yes," he said. "I'm _going_. But I'm not going to lie about it and say
I don't funk it. Because I do."

"You don't _really_."

"I own I didn't the first night--the night I knew Nicky was killed.
Because I couldn't think of anything else _but_ Nicky.

"It was after I'd written to Mother that it came on. Because I knew then
I couldn't back out of it. That's what I can't