Mr. Bevan and I wandered about in the unearthly quiet, which persisted even when the guns began to blaze away close by us, whizzing shells over our heads, and we walked down to the river, and saw the few boards which are all that remain of the bridge.  Afterwards a German shell landed with its unpleasant noise in the middle of the street; but we had wandered up a by-way, and so escaped it by a minute or less.

In a little burned house, where only a piece of blackened wall remained, I found a little crucifix which impressed me very much—­it stood out against the smoke-stained walls with a sort of grandeur of pity about it.  The legs had been shot away or burned, but “the hands were stretched out still.”

As we came away firing began all round about, and we saw the toss of smoke as the shells fell.

[Page Heading:  STEENKERKE]

31 May.—­We went to Steenkerke yesterday and called on Mrs. Knocker, and saw a terrible infirmary, which must be put right.  It isn’t fit for dogs.

At the station to-day our poor Irishman died.  Ah, it was terrible!  His lungs never recovered from the gas, and he breathed his last difficult breath at 5 o’clock.

In the evening a Zeppelin flew overhead on its way to England.

[Page Heading:  NIGHTINGALES]

There is a nightingale in a wood near here.  He seems to sing louder and more purely the heavier the fighting that is going on.  When men are murdering each other he loses himself in a rapture, of song, recalling all the old joyous things which one used to know.

The poetry of life seems to be over.  The war songs are forced and foolish.  There is no time for reading, and no one looks at pictures, but the nightingale sings on, and the long-ago spirit of youth looks out through Time’s strong bars, and speaks of evenings in old, dim woods at home, and of girlish, splendid drives home from some dance where “he” was, when we watched the dawn break, and saw our mother sleeping in the carriage, and wondered what it would be like not to “thrill” all the time, and to sleep when the nightingale was singing.

Later there came the time when the song of the throbbing nightingale made one impatient, because it sang in intolerable silence, and one ached for the roar of things, and for the clash of endeavour and for the strain of purpose.  Peace was at a discount then, and struggle seemed to be the eternal good.  The silent woods had no word for one, the nightingale was only a mate singing a love-song, and one wanted something more than that.

And afterwards, when the struggle and the strain were given one in abundant measure, the song of the nightingale came in the lulls that occurred in one’s busy life.  One grew to connect it with coffee out on the lawn in some houses of surpassing comfort, where (years and years ago) one dressed for dinner, and a crinkly housemaid brought hot water to one’s room.  The song went on above the smug comfort