st that you should read the Report of the
Registrar-General when it comes out. It will cause some consternation, I
can promise you. Young women, Quinn, simply can't be kept away from the
soldiers, and I've been told ... well!..."

Again he shrugged his shoulders, and turned his palms upwards and raised
his eyebrows. A Member of Parliament had written to the _Morning Post_
about it ... a Conservative member of Parliament, not a Liberal or a
Socialist, mark you, but a Conservative....

"Two thousand cases expected in one town," Mullally whispered. "Knows it
for a fact. Seen the girls!..."

Mullally proposed a calculation. They were to work out the number of
unmarried girls who would shortly become mothers, using the Conservative
M.P.'s letter as a basis of calculation.

"Thousands and thousands," he prophesied. "Hundreds of thousands. _All_
illegitimate. I believe, of course, that we make too much fuss about the
marriage laws, Quinn, but still ... there are limits, don't you think? I
mean, we must make changes slowly, not in this ... this drastic fashion.
But what are you to expect? When the very Cabinet Ministers are proved
to have shares in munition works, is it any wonder that the common
soldier runs riot?..."

"I get out at the next station," said Henry.

"Do you?" said Mullally. "But I thought you didn't change until you got
to Whitcombe Junction?"

"I don't" said Henry, "but I get out at the next station!"

"I see," said Mullally.

"About time," Henry thought.

6

After dinner, he asked Mary to walk to the village with him.

"Isn't it late?" Mrs. Graham objected.

"Oh, no," he answered. "It's a beautiful moonlight night, and I feel I
want to stretch my legs. I've been cooped up in the train best part of
the day. Come along, Mary!"

"I'll just get my coat," she said.

When they were ready, he put his arm in hers, and they walked down the
long lane, past the copse and through the pine trees, to the village.

"It's very quiet to-night," Mary said.

"Extraordinarily still," he answered.

There was no one in the village street and there were no lights shining
from any of the windows, except from the bedroom of a cottage near the
sea.

"They've all gone to bed very early, haven't they?" he said, glancing
about the deserted street.

"But it isn't early, Quinny," she replied. "It's quite late. It must be
nearly ten o'clock. We had dinner much later to-night because your train
was so long in gett