t away."

Looking at her, feeling her arms round him, Michael felt that what he
had to say was beyond the power of his lips to utter. And yet, here in
her presence, the absolute necessity of telling her climbed like some
peak into the ample sunrise far above the darkness and the mists that
hung low about it.

"And what lots you must have to tell me," she said. "I want to hear
all--all."

Suddenly Michael put up his left hand and took away from his neck the
arm that encircled it. But he did not let go of it. He held it in his
hand.

"I have to tell you one thing at once," he said. She looked at him, and
the smile that burned in her eyes was extinguished. From his gesture,
from his tone, she knew that he spoke of something as serious as their
love.

"What is it?" she said. "Tell me, then."

He did not falter, but looked her full in the face. There was no
breaking it to her, or letting her go through the gathering suspense of
guessing.

"It concerns Hermann," he said. "It concerns Hermann and me. The last
morning that I was in the trenches, there was an attack at dawn from
the German lines. They tried to rush our trench in the dark. Hermann
led them. He got right up to the trench. And I shot him. I did not know,
thank God!"

Suddenly Michael could not bear to look at her any more. He put his arm
on the table by him and, leaning his head on it, covering his eyes he
went on. But his voice, up till now quite steady, faltered and failed,
as the sobs gathered in his throat.

"He fell across the parapet close to me," he said. . . . "I lifted him
somehow into our trench. . . . I was wounded, then. . . . He lay at the
bottom of the trench, Sylvia. . . . And I would to God it had been I who
lay there. . . . Because I loved him. . . . Just at the end he opened
his eyes, and saw me, and knew me. And he said--oh, Sylvia, Sylvia!--he
said 'Lieber Gott, Michael. Good morning, old boy.' And then he
died. . . . I have told you."

And at that Michael broke down utterly and completely for the first time
since the morning of which he spoke, and sobbed his heart out, while,
unseen to him, Sylvia sat with hands clasped together and stretched
towards him. Just for a little she let him weep his fill, but her
yearning for him would not be withstood. She knew why he had told her,
her whole heart spoke of the hugeness of it.

Then once more she laid her arm on his neck.

"Michael, my heart!" she said.

End of the Project