To the end I shall count that day as one of the happiest in my life.  Spring was in the air, though the trees and fields had still their winter colouring.  A thousand good fresh scents came out of the earth, and the larks were busy over the new furrows.  I remember that we ran up a little glen, where a stream spread into pools among sallows, and the roadside trees were heavy with mistletoe.  On the tableland beyond the Somme valley the sun shone like April.  At Beauvais we lunched badly in an inn—­badly as to food, but there was an excellent Burgundy at two francs a bottle.  Then we slipped down through little flat-chested townships to the Seine, and in the late afternoon passed through St Germains forest.  The wide green spaces among the trees set my fancy dwelling on that divine English countryside where Mary and I would one day make our home.  She had been in high spirits all the journey, but when I spoke of the Cotswolds her face grew grave.

‘Don’t let us speak of it, Dick,’ she said.  ’It’s too happy a thing and I feel as if it would wither if we touched it.  I don’t let myself think of peace and home, for it makes me too homesick . . .  I think we shall get there some day, you and I . . . but it’s a long road to the Delectable Mountains, and Faithful, you know, has to die first . . .  There is a price to be paid.’

The words sobered me.

‘Who is our Faithful?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know.  But he was the best of the Pilgrims.’

Then, as if a veil had lifted, her mood changed, and when we came through the suburbs of Paris and swung down the Champs Elysees she was in a holiday humour.  The lights were twinkling in the blue January dusk, and the warm breath of the city came to greet us.  I knew little of the place, for I had visited it once only on a four days’ Paris leave, but it had seemed to me then the most habitable of cities, and now, coming from the battle-field with Mary by my side, it was like the happy ending of a dream.

I left her at her cousin’s house near the Rue St Honore, and deposited myself, according to instructions, at the Hotel Louis Quinze.  There I wallowed in a hot bath, and got into the civilian clothes which had been sent on from London.  They made me feel that I had taken leave of my division for good and all this time.  Blenkiron had a private room, where we were to dine; and a more wonderful litter of books and cigar boxes I have never seen, for he hadn’t a notion of tidiness.  I could hear him grunting at his toilet in the adjacent bedroom, and I noticed that the table was laid for three.  I went downstairs to get a paper, and on the way ran into Launcelot Wake.

He was no longer a private in a Labour Battalion.  Evening clothes showed beneath his overcoat.  ‘Hullo, Wake, are you in this push too?’

‘I suppose so,’ he said, and his manner was not cordial.  ’Anyhow I was ordered down here.  My business is to do as I am told.’