m her and sat on the
table as if it gave him some advantage.

"No, no," he said. "I can't stand that rot. When you're a saint--or I'm a
saint--you can talk about Joan of Arc. If you want to be Joan of Arc go
and be it with some man who isn't your husband--who isn't in love with
you. Perhaps _he_ won't mind. Go with Furny if you like, though it's
rather hard on him."

I said I thought he was rather hard on Viola--if he'd seen the poor child
at Baerlere, flinging herself out of the car and proposing to climb over
the ruins of several houses and walk by herself--under shell-fire--to
Zele, because she thought he was there--

Jimmy looked at her; and he did what he had done that night when he
saw her coming towards him in the lounge. He sighed a long sigh of
complicated anguish and satisfaction.

She heard it and she understood it, and she said, "I can't help it if I
am like that. You'll have to take the risk of me. Please go away, Furny."

And I went.

* * * * *

Norah has been reading what I've just written, and she tells me that
there's a great deal about Jimmy's "joy" and his "adventure" and all
that; and not one word about his duty and devotion and self-sacrifice.
She says I don't give a serious impression of him. He might have gone
out to the war just for fun, and that it isn't fair to him.

I don't know whether it's fair or not. I write as he compels me to write.
I find that I cannot separate his joy and his adventure from his duty and
devotion and self-sacrifice; he didn't separate them himself. I don't
even know that self-sacrifice is really the word for it; and the
impression he gave me is just that--of going out for fun. It was the wild
humour of his devotion that made it the spectacle it was.

(She has told me that it's all right, so long as I recognize that it
_was_ devotion.)

After Lokeren I had no desire to go through the rest of the war with
Jimmy. To be with Jimmy was destruction to your sense of values. I have
got it firmly fixed in my head that the taking of Lokeren was an
important affair.

As for what Jimmy called the "tinpot bombardment of Melle" (there was
nothing wrong with _his_ sense of values), I shall see it insanely, for
ever and ever, as _the_ event of the war.

And there is this to be said, that Lokeren filled the last gap in the
line closing round Ghent, north, south and east, and drew it tighter. And
Melle (only four and a-half miles away) was th