" said G.J. when Concepcion broke
the melancholy enchantment by rising to look for cigarettes.

"I must be allowed to work," she answered after a pause, putting a
cigarette between her teeth. "I must have something to do--unless, of
course, you want me to go to the bad altogether."

It was a remarkable saying, but it seemed to admit that he was
legitimately entitled to his critical interest in her.

"If I'd known that," he said, suddenly inspired, "I should have asked
you to take on something for _me_." He waited; she made no response,
and he continued: "I'm secretary of my small affair since yesterday.
The paid secretary, a nice enough little thing, has just run off
to the Women's Auxiliary Corps in France and left me utterly in the
lurch. Just like domestic servants, these earnest girl-clerks are,
when it comes to the point! No imagination. Wanted to wear khaki, and
no doubt thought she was doing a splendid thing. Never occurred to her
the mess I should be in. I'd have asked you to step into the breach.
You'd have been frightfully useful."

"But I'm no girl-clerk," Concepcion gently and carelessly protested.

"Well, she wasn't either. I shouldn't have wanted you to be a typist.
We have a typist. As a matter of fact, her job needed a bit more
brains than she'd got. However--"

Another silence. G.J. rose to depart. Concepcion did not stir. She
said softly:

"I don't think anybody realises what Queen's death is to me. Not even
you." On her face was the look of sacrifice which G.J. had seen there
as they talked together in Queen's boudoir during the raid.

He thought, amazed:

"And they'd only had about twenty-four hours together, and part of
that must have been spent in making up their quarrel!"

Then aloud:

"I quite agree. People can't realise what they haven't had to go
through. I've understood that ever since I read in the paper the
day before yesterday that 'two bombs fell close together and one
immediately after the other' in a certain quarter of the West End.
That was all the paper said about those two bombs."

"Why! What do you mean?"

"And I understood it when poor old Queen gave me some similar
information on the roof."

"What _do_ you mean?"

"I was between those two bombs when they fell. One of 'em blew me
against a house. I've been to look at the place since. And I'm dashed
if I myself could realise then what I'd been through."

She gave a little cry. Her face pleased him.

"And you we