to my
family.... You see, dear, I haven't any excuse that's worth while ...
except the wish to preserve my life ... and that's a poor excuse. When I
think of being at the Front, I think of myself as dead ... lying out
there ... without any of the decencies ... until I'm offensive to the
men who were my friends ... until they sicken at the stench of _me_!..."

"Don't, dear!" she murmured.

"Perhaps I shall conquer this ... this meanness. I want to conquer it. I
want to behave as I believe. I believe that there are things one should
be glad to fight for and die for ... and I want to feel glad to fight
for them and be ready to die for them. But now I feel most that I want
to be safe ... to go on living and living and enjoying things...."

"But can you enjoy things if they're not worth dying for, Quinny? If
England weren't worthy dying for, would it be worth living in! That's
how I feel!"

"That's how I _think_, Mary, but it isn't how I _feel_. I feel that I
want to be safe no matter what happens ... if civilisation is to go to
smash and we're to be driven back to savagery, distrusting and being
distrusted ... I feel that I don't care ... that I want to be safe, to
go on living, even if I have to live in a cave and hide from
everything.... Oh, my dear, don't you see what a poor thing I am!"

"Yes," she said simply.

"And yet you're willing to marry me?"

"Yes. I can't help loving you, any more than I can help loving my
country. I can't explain it and I don't want to explain it. If I were a
man and England were in the wrong, I'd fight for England just because
she's England. Everything makes me feel like that. When Ninian was
killed, something went on saying, 'You're English! You mustn't cry!
You're English!' And when I look at the trees outside, I feel that
they're English, too, and that they're telling me I'm English ... that
somehow they're special trees, different from the trees in other
countries ... that they've got something that I've got, and that I've
got something they've got ... something that a French tree or a German
tree hasn't got.... Oh, I know it's silly, but I can't help it ... and
when I used to walk about the lanes and fields after Ninian's death ...
I felt that the birds and the grass and the ferns and everything were
saying 'You're English!' and I wanted to say back to them, 'You're
English, too!...' I suppose people feel like that everywhere ... those
friends of yours in Ireland must feel like t