her bicycle. Then he returned smiling, to his wife.

'I say, Bridget makes me feel a dunce! Is she really such a learned
party?'

Nelly's dark eyes danced a little. 'I suppose she is--but she doesn't
stick to anything. It's always something different. A few months ago, it
was geology; and we used to go out for walks with a hammer and a bag.
Last year it was _the_-ology! Our poor clergyman, Mr. Richardson, was no
match for Bridget at all. She could always bowl him over.'

'Somehow all the "ologies" seem very far away--don't they?' murmured
Sarratt, after they had laughed together. They were standing at the
window again, his arm close round her, her small dark head pressed
against him. There was ecstasy in their nearness to each other--in the
silver beauty of the lake--in the soft coming of the June evening; and
in that stern fact itself that in one short week, he would have left
her, would be facing death or mutilation, day after day, in the trenches
on the Ypres salient. While he held her, all sorts of images flitted
through his mind--of which he would not have told her for the
world--horrible facts of bloody war. In eight months he had seen plenty
of them. The signs of them were graven on his young face, on his eyes,
round which a slight permanent frown, as of perplexity, seemed to have
settled, and on his mouth which was no longer naif and boyish, but would
always drop with repose into a hard compressed line.

Nelly looked up.

'Everything's far away'--she whispered--'but this--and you!' He kissed
her upturned lips--and there was silence.