And suddenly her soul swung round, released from yesterday.

She knew what he had wanted yesterday:  that her senses should be ready to follow where her heart led.  But that was not the readiness he required from her to-day; rather it was what his anxious eyes implored her to put away from her.

There was something more.

He wasn’t going to say the obvious things, the “Well, this is hard luck on both of us.  You must be brave.  Don’t make it too hard for me.” (She could have made it intolerable.) It wasn’t that.  He knew she was brave; he knew she wouldn’t make it hard for him; he knew he hadn’t got to say the obvious things.

There was something more; something tremendous.  It came to her with the power and sweetness of first passion; but without its fear.  She no longer wanted him to take her in his arms and hold her as he had held her yesterday.  Her swinging soul was steady; it vibrated to an intenser rhythm.

She knew nothing now but that what she saw was real, and that they were seeing it together.  It was Reality itself.  It was more than they.  When realization passed it would endure.

Never as long as they lived would they be able to speak of it, to say to each other what it was they felt and saw.

* * * * *

He said, “I shall have to go soon.”

And she said, “I know.  Is there anything I can do?”

“I wish you’d go and see my mother some time.  She’d like it.”

“I should love to go and see her.  What else?”

“Well—­I’ve no business to ask you, but I wish you’d give it up.”

“I’ll give anything up.  But what?”

“That ambulance of yours that’s going to get into the firing line.”

“Oh—­”

“I know why you want to get there.  You want to tackle the hardest and most dangerous job.  Naturally.  But it won’t make it easier for us to win the War.  You can’t expect us to fight so comfy, and to be killed so comfy, if we know our womenkind are being pounded to bits in the ground we’ve just cleared.  If I thought you were knocking about anywhere there—­”

“It would make it too hard?”

“It would make me jumpy.  The chances are I shouldn’t have much time to think about it, but when I did—­”

“You’d think ‘She might have spared me that.’”

“Yes.  And you might think of your people.  It’s bad enough for them, Nicky going.”

“It isn’t only that I’d have liked to be where you’ll be, and where he’ll be.  That was natural.”

“It’s also natural that we should like to find you here when we come back.”

“I was thinking of those Belgian women, and the babies—­and England; so safe, Frank; so disgustingly safe.”

“I know.  Leaving the children in the burning house?”

(She had said that once and he had remembered.)

“You can do more for them by staying in England—­I’m asking you to take the hardest job, really.”