s not done before Roger joined up ... but it'll soon be finished.
I'm getting on excellently with it. When it's finished, I'll come over
to Boveyhayne, and then we'll settle just when we shall get
married!..._"

Then came a mood of abasement, and he wrote a long, incoherent letter to
her, telling her that he had resolved that he would not go into the
Army. "_Because I'm a coward, Mary. I've thought the thing over from
beginning to end, thought about it until I became dizzy with thinking,
and this is the end of it all: I'm a coward. I haven't the pluck to go
into the Army. That's the truth, Mary! I make excuses for myself ... I
pretend that this is England's war, not Ireland's, and tell myself that
an Irishman who joins the British Army should be regarded in the way
that an American, who joined, would be regarded ... that Irish soldiers
in the British Army are Foreign Legionaries ... and I twist my mind
about in an effort to make excuses like that, to convince, not you or
any one else_, but me. _I think I could convince_ you _that I ought not
to join, but I can't convince myself. I'm not joining, simply because
I'm a damned coward, Mary. I'm not fit to be your husband, dear. I
wasn't fit to be the friend of Gilbert and Ninian. I'm a contemptible
thing that runs to its burrow when it hears of danger. I'm glad my
father is dead. He hated the war, but he'd have hated to know that I was
not in it. He took it for granted that I would go ... never dreamed that
I wouldn't go. If he'd thought that I wouldn't join, he would never have
talked to me about the war in the way he did. My father was a proud man,
Mary, as proud as your mother, and I think he'd have died of shame if
he'd thought I was funking this. I don't know what you'll think of me. I
know what I think of myself. I simply can't face it, Mary ... that
bloodiness and groaning and stench and unending horror. That's the truth
about me. I'm a coward, and I'm not fit for you. I'd fail you, dear, if
you needed me. I fail everybody. I fail everything. I'm rotten through
and through...._"

5

But he did not send the letter to her. He had read it over before
putting it in the envelope. "Hysterical," he said to himself, calmer now
that he had vented his feelings. "That's what it is!"

He was about to tear it up, but before he could, do so, his mind veered
again. "I'll put it away," he said. "I'll leave it until the morning,
and read it again. Perhaps I'll think differently