nd what a mercy it is so!
If there was nothing to relieve war and seriousness--all the nations
would be raving lunatics by now.

"Jim will be crazy about you, Nina, when he sees you in that hat!"

"Yes, won't he! I put it on to make you crazy now!"

"Of course I always am!"

"No, Nicholas--you were once--but you are altered, some quite new
influence has come into your life--you don't say half such horrid
things."

We lunched in the restaurant. Some of the Supreme War Council were about
at the different tables, and we exchanged a few words--Nina preferred it
to my sitting-room.

"Englishmen do look attractive in uniform, Nicholas, don't they," she
said--. "I wonder if I had seen Jim in ordinary things if I would have
been so drawn to him?"

"Who knows? Do you remember how sensible you were about him and
Rochester!--it is splendid that it has turned out so well."

" ... Where is happiness, Nicholas?" and her eyes became dreamy,--"I
have a well balanced nature, and am grateful for what has been given me
in Jim, but I can't pretend that I have found perfect content--because
some part of me is always hungry--. I believe really that you were the
only person who could have fulfilled all I wanted in a man!"

"Nina, you had not the least feeling for me when you first saw me after
I was wounded, do you remember you felt like a sister--a mother--and a
family friend!"

"Yes, was not that odd!--because of course the things which used to
attract me in you and which could again now, were there all the time."

"At that moment you were so occupied with 'Jim's blue eyes,' and his
'white nice teeth,' and 'how his hair was brushed,' and 'how well his
uniform fitted'--to say nothing of his D.S.O. and his M.C. that you
could not appreciate anything else."

"You have a V.C., your teeth are divine, and you too have blue eyes,
Nicholas--."

"Eye--please,--the singular or plural in this case makes all the
difference, but I shall have my new one in fairly soon now and then
illusion will help me!"

Nina sighed--.

"Illusion! I am just not going to think of what perhaps might have
happened if I had not been surrounded with illusion, last February--."

"Well, you can always have the satisfaction of knowing that as your
interest in Jim diminishes, so his will increase--George Harcourt and I
thrashed it all out the other day--and you yourself admitted it, when we
dined. To keep the hunting instinct alive is the thing--You will hav