at the back of the train had started
singing the refrain of "Tipperary." Just for a second his arms were
round her, his lips had brushed against hers. That was all it amounted
to, but she had looked up at him and she had seen the need in his eyes.

"Good-bye," she whispered. There was not a vestige of tears or fright in
her voice. "You will be back soon, Dick. It is never good-bye."

"No," he agreed. "Never good-bye."

Then he had gone; not a minute too soon, for the train had already
started. She could not even see his face at the window, a great
blackness had come over her eyes, but she stood very straight held,
waving and smiling.

A crowd of the soldiers' wives ran past her up the platform, trying to
catch on to the hands held out to them from the windows. The men cheered
and sang and sang again. It could only have been one or two seconds that
she stood there, then slowly the blackness lifted from her eyes. A word
had risen in her heart, she said it almost aloud; the sound of it pushed
aside her tears and brought her a strange comfort. "England." It was the
name that had floated at the back of her prayers always when she prayed
for Dick. She was glad that he had gone, even the misery in her heart
could not flood out that gladness: "Who dies, if England lives?"

Mabel was standing near her and slipped her hand into hers. "Come away,
dear," she heard Mabel say; "Colonel Rutherford has got a taxi for us."

Joan was grateful to Mabel. She realized suddenly that the other woman,
who had also loved Dick, had been content to stand aside at the last and
leave them alone. She turned to her like a child turns for comfort to
someone whom instinctively it knows it can trust.

"I have been good," she said, "haven't I? I haven't shed a tear. Dick
said I wasn't to, and, Mabel, you know, I am glad that he has gone.
There are some things that matter more than just loving a person, aren't
there?"

"Honour, and duty, and the soul of man," Mabel answered. She laughed, a
little strange sound that held tears within it. "Oh, yes, Joan, you are
right to be glad that he has gone. It will make the future so much more
worth having."

"Yes," Joan whispered. Her eyes looked out over the crowded station; the
little groups of weeping women; the sadder faces of those who did not
weep and yet were hopeless. Her own eyes were full of great faith and a
radiant promise. "He will come back, I know he will come back," she
said.

Outside the