When they sat together after the day’s work they found themselves saying the most amazing things to each other.

Anthony said, “Downham thinks John’s heart is decidedly better.  I shouldn’t wonder if he’d have to go.”  Almost as if the idea had been pleasant to him.

And Frances:  “Well, I suppose if we had thirteen sons instead of three, we ought to send them all.”

“Positively,” said Anthony.  “I believe I’d let Dorothy go out now if she insisted.”

“Oh, no, I think we might be allowed to keep Dorothy.”

She pondered.  “I suppose one will get used to it in time.  I grudged giving Nicky at first.  I don’t grudge him now.  I believe if he went out to-morrow, and was killed, I should only feel how splendid it was of him.”

“I wish poor Dorothy could feel that way about Drayton.”

“She does—­really.  But that’s different.  Frank had to go.  It was his profession.  Nicky’s gone in of his own free will.”

He did not remind her that Frank’s free will had counted in his choice of a profession.

“Once,” said Frances, “volunteers didn’t count.  Now they count more than the whole Army put together.”

They were silent, each thinking the same thing; each knowing that sooner or later they must speak of it.

Frances was the braver of the two.  She spoke first.

“There’s Michael.  I don’t know what to make of him.  He doesn’t seem to want to go.”

That was the vulnerable place; there they had ached unbearably in secret.  It was no use trying to hide it any longer.  Something must be done about Michael.

“I wish you’d say something to him, Anthony.”

“I would if I were going myself.  But how can I?”

“When he knows that you’d have gone before any of them if you were young enough.”

“I can’t say anything.  You’ll have to.”

“No, Anthony.  I can’t ask him to go any more than you can.  Nicky is the only one of us who has any right to.”

“Or Dorothy.  Dorothy’d be in the trenches now if she had her way.”

“I can’t think how he can bear to look at Dorothy.”

But in the end she did say something.

She went to him in his room upstairs where he worked now, hiding himself away every evening out of their sight.  “Almost,” she thought, “as if he were ashamed of himself.”

Her heart ached as she looked at him; at the fair, serious beauty of his young face; at the thick masses of his hair that would not stay as they were brushed back, but fell over his forehead; it was still yellow, and shining as it shone when he was a little boy.

He was writing.  She could see the short, irregular lines of verse on the white paper.  He covered them with his hand as she came in lest she should see them.  That hurt her.

“Michael,” she said, “I wonder if you ever realize that we are at war.”

“The War isn’t a positive obsession to me, if that’s what you mean.”