o his wounds.

* * * * *

The Friend Who Stood By

"And you will come back, Jim? Promise! Promise!"

"Of course, darling--of course! There! Don't cry! Can't you see it's a
chance in a thousand? I've never had such a chance before."

The sound of a woman's low sobbing was audible in the silence that
followed; and a man who was leaning on the sea-wall above, started and
peered downwards.

He could dimly discern two figures standing in the shadow of a great
breakwater below him. More than that he could not distinguish, for it
was a dark night; but he knew that the man's arms were about the girl,
and that her face was hidden against him.

Realising himself to be an intruder, he stood up and began to walk away.

He had not gone a dozen yards before the sound of flying feet caught his
attention, and he turned his head. A woman's light figure was running
behind him along the deserted parade. He waited for her under a
gas-lamp.

She overtook him and fled past him without a pause. He caught a glimpse
of a pale face and fair hair in wild disorder.

Then she was gone again into the night, running swiftly. The darkness
closed about her, and hid her from view.

The man on the parade paused for several seconds, then walked back to
his original resting-place by the sea-wall.

The band on the pier was playing a jaunty selection from a comic opera.
It came in gusts of gaiety. The wash of the sea, as it crept up the
beach, was very mysterious and remote.

Below, on the piled shingle, a man stood alone, staring out over the
darkness, motionless and absorbed.

The watcher above him struck a match at length and kindled a cigarette.
His face was lit up during the operation. It was the face of a man who
had seen a good deal of the world and had not found the experience
particularly refreshing. Yet, as he looked down upon the silent figure
below him, there was more of compassion than cynicism in his eyes. There
was a glint of humour also, like the shrewd half-melancholy humour of a
monkey that possesses the wisdom of all the ages, and can impart none of
it.

Suddenly there was a movement on the shingle. The lonely figure had
turned and flung itself face downwards among the tumbling stones. The
abandonment of the action was very young, and perhaps it was that very
fact that made it so indescribably pathetic. To Lester Cheveril, leaning
on the sea-wall, it