“As long days close,
          And weary English suns go west’ring home.”

The memories made my breath come fast and jerkily.  With madly exalted words I addressed that slight fair-haired figure, which must now for ever be only a memory. “My friend,” I said to it; “mine, mine!” In the freshness of my loss, I thought no lover had ever loved as I did.  “I loved you—­I loved you—­I loved you,” I repeated.  And I even worked myself up into a weary longing to die.  Pennybet had led the way, and Doe now was following him.  And why should not I complete the story?  Why not?  Why not?

My brain was pulsing thus tempestuously when Monty drew near me.  I affected not to notice his coming, but when he sat down beside me I decided to speak first.  I felt it would be a supreme relief to hurt him with the news that I had abandoned his ideal, and let my spiritual life collapse.  So, without looking at him, I said angrily: 

“There’s no beauty in it.”

“Rupert, you’re wrong,” he answered, “and you’ll see it when you are less unhappy.”  He paused.  “Doe—­Edgar used to worry himself because he thought that any really good thing that he did was spoiled by a desire for glory.  He often said that he wanted to do a really perfect thing.  And, Rupert, this afternoon he told me that, when he went forward to put out that gun, he felt quite alone.  He seemed surrounded with smoke and flying dust.  And he thought he would do one big deed unseen....  He did his perfect thing at the last.”

“There’s no beauty,” I repeated dully.

“Rupert, Edgar is dead....  And there’s only one unbeautiful thing about his death, and that is the way his friend is taking it.”

Monty stopped, and both of us watched the sun go down behind Imbros.  It was throwing out golden rays like the spokes of a wheel.  These rays caught the flaky clouds above Samothrace, and just pencilled their outline with a tiny rim of gold and fire.  And the hills of Imbros, as always in the AEgean Sea, turned purple.

“There’s no beauty in death and burial and corruption,” I said.

“Yes, there is, even in them.  There’s beauty in thinking that the same material which goes to make these earthly hills and that still water should have been shaped into a graceful body, and lit with the divine spark which was Edgar Doe.  There’s beauty in thinking that, when the unconquerable spark has escaped away, the material is returned to the earth, where it urges its life, also an unconquerable thing, into grass and flowers.  It’s harmonious—­it’s beautiful.”

This time I forbore to repeat my obstinate denial.

“And your friendship is a more beautiful whole, as things are.  Had there been no war, you’d have left school and gone your different roads, till each lost trace of the other.  It’s always the same.  But, as it is, the war has held you in a deepening intimacy till—­till the end.  It’s—­it’s perfect.”