Then Pamela tried to tell him all that she herself had understood of the gallant deed, the bit of ‘observation work’ in the course of which Desmond had received his wound.  He had gone out with another subaltern, a sergeant, and a telephonist, creeping by night over No Man’s Land to a large shell-hole, close upon an old crater where a German outpost of some thirty men had found shelter.  They had remained there for forty-eight hours—­unrelieved—­listening and telephoning.  Then having given all necessary information to the artillery Headquarters which had sent them out, they started on the return journey.  But they were seen and fired on.  Desmond might have escaped but for his determined endeavours to bring in the Sergeant, who was the first of them to fall.  A German sniper hidden in a fragment of ruin caught the boy just outside the British line; he fell actually upon the trench.

Desmond had been the leader all through, said Pamela; his Colonel said he was ’the pluckiest, dearest fellow’—­he failed ’in nothing you ever asked him for.’

Just such a story as comes home, night after night, and week after week, from the fighting line!  Nothing remarkable in it, except, perhaps, the personal quality of the boy who had sacrificed his life.  Arthur Chicksands, with three years of the war behind him, felt that he knew it by heart—­could have repeated it, almost in his sleep, and each time with a different name.

‘The other lieutenant who was with him,’ said Pamela, ’told us he was in splendid spirits the day before; and then at night, just before they started, Desmond was very quiet, and they said to each other that whatever happened that night they never expected to see England again; and each promised the other that the one who survived, if either did, would take messages home.  Desmond told him he was to tell me, if he was killed—­that he’d “had a splendid life”—­and lived it “all out.”  “She’s not to think of it as cut short.  I’ve had it all.  One lives here a year in a day.”  And he’d only been seven weeks at the front!  He said it was the things he’d seen—­not the horrible things—­but the glorious things that made him feel like that.  Now he did believe there was a God—­and I must believe it too.’

The tears ran down her face.  Arthur held the quivering hands close in his; and through his soldier’s mind, alive with the latest and innermost knowledge of the war, there flashed a terrible pre-vision of the weeks to come, the weeks of the great offensive, the storm of which might break any day—­was certain, indeed, to break soon, and would leave behind it, trampled like leaves into a mire of blood, thousands of lives like Desmond’s—­Britain’s best and rarest.

* * * * *

An hour later the hall was deserted, except for Elizabeth, who, after seeing Pamela to bed, came down to write some household letters by the only fire.  Presently the surgeon who was sitting up with Desmond appeared, looking worried.  His countenance brightened at sight of Elizabeth, with whom he had already had much practical consultation.