Sophie smiled understandingly.  She looked over the valley with a wistful air.

“Did you ever read ’The Sons of Martha’?” she asked.  Do you remember these lines: 

“’Not as a ladder to reach high Heaven,
  Not as an altar to any creed,
But simple service simply given
  To his own kind in their common need.’”

“It is a noble mark to shoot at,” Thompson said.

He fell silent.  Sophie went on after a minute.

“Dad said he was going back to first principles when he began this.  There are men here who have found economic salvation and self-respect, who think he is greater than any general.  I’m proud of dad.  He wanted to do something.  What he has accomplished makes all my puttering about at what, after all, was pure charity, a puerile sort of service.  I gave that up after you went away.”  She snuggled one hand into his.  “It didn’t seem worth while—­nothing seemed worth while until dad evolved this.”

She waved her hand again over the valley.  Thompson’s eyes gleamed.  It was good to look at, good to think of.  It was good to be there.  He remembered, with uncanny, disturbing clearness of vision, things he had looked down upon from a greater height over bloody stretches in France.  And he shuddered a little.

Sophie felt the small tremor run through him.

“What is it?” she whispered anxiously.

“It is beautiful, and I can appreciate its beauty all the more from seeing it with you.  I’d like to take a hand in this,” he said quietly.  “I was just comparing it with other things—­and wondering.”

“Wondering what?”

“If I’ll get back to this—­and you,” he said, with his arms around her.  “Oh, well, I’ve got three months’ leave.  That’s a lot.”

Sophie looked at him out of troubled eyes.  Her voice shook.

“You will be ordered to the front again?”

He nodded.  “Very likely.”

“I don’t want you to go,” she broke out passionately.  “You mustn’t.  Oh, Wes, Wes!”

“Do you think I like the prospect any better?” he said tenderly.  “But I am an officer in the Royal Flying Corps, and the war is not over yet.  Buck up, sweetheart.  I had six months’ training, a year in fighting planes, six months in hospital, and barring an occasional spell of uncertain nerves, I am still as good as ever.  Don’t worry.  I was silly to say what I thought, I suppose.”

“Nevertheless, it is true,” she said.  “You may go again and never come back.  But I suppose one must face that.  Thousands of women have had to face it.  Why should I be exempt?”

She wiped her eyes and smiled uncertainly.

“We shall simply have to keep that in the background.  I want to forget everything but that you are here and that I’m happy,” she whispered, with her arms about his neck.  “I want to forget everything else—­until it’s time for you to go.”

“Amen,” Thompson replied, and kissed her, and then they went silently, hand in hand down to the swinging bridge with the sun gone to rest below the western sky-line, and dusk creeping softly up over the valley floor.