“I see,” he said.

It made him sad to look at the tree; it made him sad to look at Veronica—­because both the tree and Veronica were beautiful.

“When I was a little girl I used to sit and look and look at that tree till it changed and got all thin and queer and began to move towards me.

“I never knew whether it had really happened or not; I don’t know now—­or whether it was the tree or me.  It was as if by looking and looking you could make the tree more real and more alive.”

Michael remembered something.

“Dorothy says you saw Ferdie the night he died.”

“So I did.  But that’s not the same thing.  I didn’t have to look and look.  I just saw him.  I sort of saw Frank that last night—­when the call came—­only sort of—­but I knew he was going to be killed.

“I didn’t see him nearly so distinctly as I saw Nicky-”

“Nicky?  You didn’t see him—­as you saw Ferdie?”

“No, no, no! it was ages ago—­in Germany—­before he married.  I saw him with Desmond.”

“Have you ever seen me?”

“Not yet.  That’s because you don’t want me as they did.”

“Don’t I!  Don’t I!”

And she said again:  “Not yet.”

Nicky had had leave for Christmas.  He had come and gone.

Frances and Anthony were depressed; they were beginning to be frightened.

For Nicky had finished his training.  He might be sent out any day.

Nicky had had some moments of depression.  Nothing had been heard of the Moving Fortress.  Again, the War Office had given no sign of having received it.  It was hard luck, he said, on Drayton.

And John was depressed after he had gone.

“They’d much better have taken me,” he said.

“What’s the good of sending the best brains in the Army to get pounded?  There’s Drayton.  He ought to have been in the Ordnance.  He’s killed.

“And here’s Nicky.  Nicky ought to be in the engineers or the gunners or the Royal Flying Corps; but he’s got to stand in the trenches and be pounded.

“Lot they care about anybody’s brains.  Drayton could have told Kitchener that we can’t win this war without high-explosive shells.  So could Nicky.

“You bet they’ve stuck all those plans and models in the sanitary dust-bin behind the War Office back door.  It’s enough to make Nicky blow his brains out.”

“Nicky doesn’t care, really,” Veronica said.  “He just leaves things—­and goes on.”

That night, after the others had gone to bed, Michael stayed behind with his father.

“It must look to you,” he said, “as if I ought to have gone instead of Nicky.”

“I don’t say so, Michael.  And I’m sure Nicky wouldn’t.”

“No, but you both think it.  You see, if I went I shouldn’t be any good at it.  Not the same good as Nicky.  He wants to go and I don’t.  Can’t you see it’s different?”