Capt.  T. E. Simpson,
King’s Own Yorkshire L. I. VIth Infantry Brigade,
15th Division, British Expeditionary Force.

And I put it carefully away in my address book until the time should come for me to write and tell “how I came through”; the phrase did disturb me a little.

I did not eat any supper.  Food seemed to be the last thing I wanted.  I sat down in the study to read.  It was about eight when I heard the gate open.  Looking out I saw a man in khaki, his gun on his shoulder, marching up the path.  I went to the door.

“Good-evening, ma’am,” he said.  “All right?”

I assured him that I was.

“I am the corporal of the guard,” he added.  “The commander’s compliments, and I was to report to you that your road was picketed for the night and that all is well.”

I thanked him, and he marched away, and took up his post at the gate, and I knew that this was the commander’s way of letting me know that Captain Simpson had kept his word.  I had just time while the corporal stood at the door to see “Bedford” on his cap, so I knew that the new regiment was from Bedfordshire.

I sat up awhile longer, trying to fix my mind on my book, trying not to look round constantly at my pretty green interior, at all my books, looking so ornamental against the walls of my study, at all the portraits of the friends of my life of active service above the shelves, and the old sixteenth-century Buddha, which Oda Neilson sent me on my last birthday, looking so stoically down from his perch to remind me how little all these things counted.  I could not help remembering at the end that my friends at Voulangis had gone—­that they were at that very moment on their way to Marseilles, that almost every one else I knew on this side of the water was either at Havre waiting to sail, or in London, or shut up in Holland or Denmark; that except for the friends I had at the front I was alone with my beloved France and her Allies.  Through it all there ran a thought that made me laugh at last—­how all through August I had felt so outside of things, only suddenly to find it right at my door.  In the back of my mind—­pushed back as hard as I could—­stood the question—­what was to become of all this?

Yet, do you know, I went to bed, and what is more I slept well.  I was physically tired.  The last thing I saw as I closed up the house was the gleam of the moonlight on the muskets of the picket pacing the road, and the first thing I heard, as I waked suddenly at about four, was the crunching of the gravel as they still marched there.