“No,” said Jay.

“He was very anxious you should know the truth about it, because he said he had never lied to you.  He was always sure that if he were shot it would be in the back while he was lacing his boots, or at some other unromantic moment.  And in that case he said he could lie to Anonyma and your cousin vicariously through the War Office, which would write to them about Glory, and Duty, and Thanks Due.  But he wanted me to write to you, and tell you how it happened, and tell you that death was just an ordinary old thing, no more romantic than anything else, without a capital letter, and that one died as one had lived—­in a little ordinary way—­and that there was no such thing as Glory between people who didn’t lie to each other.  I am telling you all this from my notes.  I should never have thought of any of it for myself, as you know.  I hope you don’t mind.”

“No,” said Jay.  She heard what he said, yet she was not listening.  Her mind was listening to things heard a very long time ago.  She heard herself and Kew in confidential chorus, saying those laboriously simple prayers that Anonyma used to teach them.  She heard again the swishing that their feet used to make in the leaves of Kensington Gardens.  Kew’s was the louder swish by right.  She thought of him as an admirable big brother of eight, with a round face and blunt feet and very hard hands.  She heard the comfortable roar of the nursery fire, and the comfortable sound of autumn rain baffled by the window; she saw the early winter breakfast by lamplight, and the red nursery carpet that had an oblong track worn away round the table by the frequent game of “Little Men Jumping.”  She heard the voice of Kew clamouring against the voice of Nana because he would not eat his bacon-fat.  On those days there was a horrid resurrection at luncheon of the bacon-fat uneaten at breakfast.

“As it happened,” continued Mr. Morgan, no longer white, but very red, “he wasn’t killed in an advance, or anything grand.  He told me to tell you, so I am telling you.  He was killed by a sniper while he was setting a trap of his own invention to catch the rats as they came over the parapet.  He was shot in the chest very early yesterday morning, and he lived about four hours.  He was not in much pain, he even laughed a little once or twice to think he should have lived and died so consistently.  He told me that he had never seen a moment’s real romantic fighting; he had never once felt patriotic or dramatic or dutiful, he said.  He wandered a little, I think, because he seemed worried about the rats that might be caught in the trap he had set.  He seemed to mix up the rats and the Boches.  He said that these creatures didn’t know they were vermin, they just thought they were honest average animals doing their bit, and then suddenly killed by a malignant chaos.  My notes are very hurried.  I am afraid I am repeating myself.”