“I am finding myself busier than I have ever been before, finding myself, indeed, facing the most stupendous thing in the world.  It isn’t the wounded men or the dead men or the heart-breaking aspect of the refugees that gets me, it is the sight of the devastated country—­made barren and blackened into hell not by devils, but by those who have called themselves men.  When I think of our own country, ready soon to bud and bloom with the spring, and of this country where spring will come and go, oh, many springs, before there will be bud and bloom, I am overwhelmed by the tragic contrast.  How can we laugh over there when they are crying here?  Perhaps more than anything else, the difference in conditions was brought home to me as I motored the other day through a country where there was absolutely no sign of life, not a tree or a bird—­except those war birds, the aeroplanes, hovering above the horizon.

“Well, as we stopped our car for some slight repairs, there rose up from a deserted trench, a lean cat with a kitten in her mouth.  Oh, such a starved old cat, Jean, gray and war-worn.  And her kitten was little and blind, and when she had laid it at our feet, she went back and got another.  Then she stood over them, mewing, her eyes big and hungry.  But she was not afraid of us, or if she was afraid, she stood her ground, asking help for those helpless babies.

“Jean, I thought of Polly Ann.  Of all the petted Polly Anns in America, and then of this starved old thing, and they seemed so typical.  You are playing the glad game over there, and it is easy to play it with enough to eat and plenty to wear, and away from the horror of it all.  But how could that old pussy-cat be glad, how could she be anything but frightened and hungry and begging my help?

“Well, we took her in.  We had some food with us, and we gave her all she could eat, and then she curled up on a pile of bags in the bottom of the car, and lay there with her kittens, as happy as if we were not going lickety-split over the shell-torn spaces.

“And that your tender heart may be at rest, I may as well tell you that she and the kittens are living in great content in a country house where one of the officers who was in the car with us is installed.  We have named her Dolores, but it is ceasing to be appropriate.  She is no longer sad, and while she is on somewhat slim fare like the rest of us, she is a great hunter and catches mice in the barn, so that she is growing strong and smooth, and she is not, perhaps, to be pitied as much as Polly Ann on her pink cushion.

“And here I am writing about cats, while the only thing that is really in my heart is—­You.

“Ever since the moment I left you, I have carried with me the vision of you in your wedding gown—­my dear, my dear.  Perhaps it is just as well that I left when I did, for I am most inordinately jealous of Derry, not only because he has you, but because he has love and life before him, while I, already, am looking back.