of their lives; and journalists sleeping the sleep of the just.  And over them all, in the moonlight that thought ‘The cursed war!’ flapped its black wings, like an old crow!  “If Christ were real,” he mused, “He’d reach that moon down, and go chalking ‘Peace’ with it on every door of every house, all over Europe.  But Christ’s not real, and Hindenburg and Harmsworth are!” As real they were as two great bulls he had once seen in South Africa, fighting.  He seemed to hear again the stamp and snort and crash of those thick skulls, to see the beasts recoiling and driving at each other, and the little red eyes of them.  And pulling a letter out of his pocket, he read it again by the light of the moon: 

“15, Camelot Mansions, “St. John’s Wood.

“Dear Mr. Fort, “I came across your Club address to-night, looking at some old letters.  Did you know that I was in London?  I left Steenbok when my husband died, five years ago.  I’ve had a simply terrific time since.  While the German South West campaign was on I was nursing out there, but came back about a year ago to lend a hand here.  It would be awfully nice to meet you again, if by any chance you are in England.  I’m working in a V. A. D. hospital in these parts, but my evenings are usually free.  Do you remember that moonlit night at grape harvest?  The nights here aren’t scented quite like that.  Listerine!  Oh!  This war!  “With all good remembrances, “Leila lynch.”

A terrific time!  If he did not mistake, Leila Lynch had always had a terrific time.  And he smiled, seeing again the stoep of an old Dutch house at High Constantia, and a woman sitting there under the white flowers of a sweet-scented creeper—­a pretty woman, with eyes which could put a spell on you, a woman he would have got entangled with if he had not cut and run for it!  Ten years ago, and here she was again, refreshing him out of the past.  He sniffed the fragrance of the little letter.  How everybody always managed to work into a letter what they were doing in the war!  If he answered her he would be sure to say:  “Since I got lamed, I’ve been at the War Office, working on remounts, and a dull job it is!” Leila Lynch!  Women didn’t get younger, and he suspected her of being older than himself.  But he remembered agreeably her white shoulders and that turn of her neck when she looked at you with those big grey eyes of hers.  Only a five-day acquaintanceship, but they had crowded much into it as one did in a strange land.  The episode had been a green and dangerous spot, like one of those bright mossy bits of bog when you were snipe-shooting, to set foot on which was to let you down up to the neck, at least.  Well, there was none of that danger now, for her husband was dead-poor chap!  It would be nice, in these dismal days, when nobody spent any time whatever except in the service of the country, to improve his powers of service by a few hours’ recreation in her