spreading their light armies through the flooded margins of the lake, and bending to the light wind, which had just, as though in mischief, blotted out the dream-world in the water, and set it rippling eastwards in one sheet of living silver, broken only by a cloud-shadow at its further end.  Fragrance was everywhere—­from the trees, the young fern, the grass; and from the shining west, the shadowed fells, the brilliant water, there breathed a voice of triumphant beauty, of unconquered peace, which presently affected George Sarratt strangely.

They had just passed through a little wood; and in its friendly gloom, he had put his arm round his wife so that they had lingered a little, loth to leave its shelter.  But now they had emerged again upon the radiance of the fell-side, and he had found a stone for Nelly to rest on.

’That those places in France, and that sky—­should be in the same world!’ he said, under his breath, pointing to the glow on the eastern fells, as he threw himself down on the turf beside her.

Her face flushed with exercise and happiness suddenly darkened.

’Don’t—­don’t talk of them to-night!’—­she said passionately—­’not to-night—­just to-night, George!’

And she stooped impetuously to lay her hand on his lips.  He kissed the hand, held it, and remained silent, his eyes fixed upon the lake.  On that day week he would probably just have rejoined his regiment.  It was somewhere in the neighbourhood of Bailleul.  Hot work, he heard, was expected.  There was still a scandalous shortage of ammunition—­and if there was really to be a ‘push,’ the losses would be appalling.  Man after man that he knew had been killed within a week—­two or three days—­twenty-four hours even!—­of rejoining.  Supposing that within a fortnight Nelly sat here, looking at this lake, with the War Office telegram in her hand—­’Deeply regret to inform you, etc.’  This was not a subject on which he had ever allowed himself to dwell, more than in his changed circumstances he was bound to dwell.  Every soldier, normally, expects to get through.  But of course he had done everything that was necessary for Nelly.  His will was in the proper hands; and the night before their wedding he had written a letter to her, to be given her if he fell.  Otherwise he had taken little account of possible death; nor had it cost him any trouble to banish the thought of it.

But the beauty of the evening—­of this old earth, which takes no account of the perishing of men—­and Nelly’s warm life beside him, hanging upon his, perhaps already containing within it the mysterious promise of another life, had suddenly brought upon him a tremor of soul—­an inward shudder.  Did he really believe in existence after death—­in a meeting again, in some dim other scene, if they were violently parted now?  He had been confirmed while at school.  His parents were Church people of a rather languid type, and it seemed the natural thing to do.  Since then he