yself floating up the aisle in a cloud of
white veil, and a hushed crowd and the organ playing.

"And it won't be a bit like that. I shall wear a uniform and a flannel
shirt, and I'll be lucky if my boots are not splashed with mud. It will
seem queer to be married with my boots on, as men died in old romances.

"Perhaps by the time this reaches you, Drusilla Gray will be Drusilla
Hewes, and so I ask your blessing, and your prayers.

"I should never have asked for your prayers a year ago. I should have
been thanking you for your wedding present of glass and silver, and
asking you to dine with me on Tuesday or Thursday as the case might be.
But now, the only thought that holds me is whether God will give my
Captain back to me, and the hope that if not, I may have the strength to
bear it--.

"I am sure that Derry will feel the sublimity of it all when he
comes--death is so near, yet so little feared; the men know that tonight
or tomorrow they may be beyond the shadows, and it holds them to
something bigger than themselves.

"But be sure of this, my dears, that when Derry goes the seas will not
part you--. Spirit touches spirit, space has nothing to do with it.
Often when I am alone, the Captain comes to me, speaks to me, cheers me;
I think if he should die in battle, he would still come.

"If ever I have a home of my own, I shall build an altar not to the
Unknown God but to the God whom I had lost and have found again. I go
into old churches here to pray, and it is no longer a matter of feeling,
no longer a matter of form, it is something more than that.

"And now I can't ask you to dance at my wedding, but I can ask you to
wish me happiness and a long life with my lover, or failing that, the
strength to give him up--"

She signed herself, "Always loving you both, DRUSILLA."

"Such a dear letter," said Jean.

"And such a different Drusilla. Do you think that the Drusilla of the
old days would have built an altar?"

And it was because of Drusilla's letter that Derry took Jean that
afternoon to the great Library with the gold dome and guided her to a
corridor made beautiful by the brush of an artist who had painted "The
Occupations of the Day"; in one lunette a primitive man and woman knelt
before a pile of stones on which burned a sacred flame. Above them was
blue sky--flowers grew within reach of their hands--the fields stretched
beyond.

"We must build an altar, dearest."

"In our hearts--"

"An