the other fellow does that. And if we become the other fellow, it's so deuced unexpected I don't suppose it matters much."

"But, we've got to go through with it, haven't we?" she said quietly.

"Of course we have," he answered with a laugh; "and the knowledge of that fact cuts about as much ice with the men in the mud holes up there as brave little Belgium or suffering little Serbia. I tell you we're all dazed, Margaret—just living in a dream. Some of us take it worse than others, that's all. You want the constitution of an elephant combined with the intelligence of a cow to fight these days."

"And yet," she said with a grave little smile, "under-lying it all, there's the big ideal surely. . . . If I didn't think that, if I didn't know that, I . . . I couldn't go on."

"To which particular ideal do you allude?" he asked cynically. "The League of Nations; or the triumph of Democracy, or the War to end War. They all sound so topping, don't they? received with howls of applause by the men who haven't had their boots off for a week." He thumped the sand savagely. "Cut the cackle, my dear girl; cut the cackle. This little performance was started by a few of the puppets who thought they had a winning hand, and the other puppets called a show down. And then the game passed out of their hands. They write books about it, and discover new Gods, and pass new Acts of Parliament—but the thing takes no notice. It just goes on—inexorably. Man has been dabbling with stakes that are too big for him, Margaret. And the trouble is that the cards up in the trenches are getting mighty tattered."

She looked at him curiously. "I'd never have thought it would have taken you like that, Derek . . . Not quite as badly."

"You formed your opinion in the bad old days, didn't you?" he said lightly. "When we danced and made love at the Grafton Galleries." She flushed a little, but did not lower her eyes. "Such a serious girl you were too, Margaret; I wonder how you ever put up with a brainless sort of ass like me."

"Because I liked you," she answered quietly, and suddenly it struck Vane, almost with a feeling of surprise, that the girl sitting beside him was more than attractive. He wondered why he had let her slip so easily out of his life. And the train of thought once started seemed a not unpleasant one. . . . "You'll get it back soon, Derek—your sense of proportion. You've got to."

"So that I can help build the new Heaven and the new Earth," he laughed.

"So that you may help build the new Heaven and the new Earth," she repeated gravely rising to her feet. "I must go back or I'll miss my tea."

"Have a cup with me in the village." Vane scrambled up and fell into step beside her. They passed Monsieur still snoring, and Madame nodding peacefully over her knitting, and crossed the deserted promenade. Then in silence they walked up into the main street of the little town in search of a tea shop.

"Do you realise, Margaret," he remarked as they sat down at a small marble-topped table, "that I haven't seen or spoken to a woman for six months? . . . Heaven help us! Aren't there any cakes?"

"Of course not," laughed Margaret, "nor milk, nor sugar. There's a war on up the road. You want about ten drops of that liquid saccharine." In the sunny street outside, soldiers in various stages of convalescence, strolled aimlessly about. An occasional motor car, containing officers—on duty, of course—slowed down at the corner opposite and disgorged its load. A closer inspection of one of them might have revealed a few suspicious looking gashes in the upholstery and holes in the mud-guards. Of course—shrapnel—but, then shrapnel did not occur by the sea. And on what duty could officers from the shrapnel area be engaged on at Paris Plage? . . . However, let us be discreet in all things.

In a few hours that shrapnel scarred car would be carrying its freight back to Boulogne, where a table at the restaurant Mony had already been secured for dinner. Then back through the night, to call at various dilapidated farms and holes in the ground, in the area where shrapnel and crumps are not unknown. . . . But just for a few brief hours the occupants of the car were going to soak themselves in the Waters of Forgetfulness; they were going to live—even as the tripper from the slums lives his little span at Margate. And they were no whit less excited at the thought . . .

They did not show it by an excessive consumption of indigestible fruit, or by bursting into unmelodious song. True, the greatest of all the "Q" men, who had come officially from a Nissen hut near Poperinghe to study the question of salvaged materials at the base, had waved a friendly hand at all the ladies—beautiful and otherwise—whom they met. But then save for salvage he was much as other men. And with that exception they just lay back in the car and thought; while the trees that were green rushed past them, and war was not.

Thus had they come to the sea. To-morrow once more the flat, dusty country with the heat haze shimmering over it and every now and then the dull drone of some bursting crump, or the vicious crack of high explosive. Behind, the same old row of balloons; in front, the same old holes in the ground. . . . But to-day—peace. . . .

Vane thoughtfully stirred the pale straw-coloured concoction reputed to be tea on the table in front of him. The remark Margaret had made to him on the beach was running through his mind—"The new Heaven and the new Earth." Yes, but on what foundations? And would they be allowed to anyway? Reconstruction is work for the politician—not for the soldier. . . . Most certainly not. . . . The soldier's ignorance on every subject in the world except fighting is complete. And even over that he's not all he might be: he requires quite a lot of help from lawyers, doctors, and successful grocers. . . . In fact, the only thing he is allowed to do quite on his own is to die . . .

Vane smiled a little bitterly, and Margaret leaned across the table towards him. "You'll get it back soon, Derek—believe me, old boy."

"That's very possible. But will the people at home? I'm jangled, Margaret, I know it—just for the time. . . . However, don't let's talk about me. Tell me about yourself. . . ."

The girl shrugged her shoulders slightly. "I don't know that there's much to tell. I've never been so happy in my life as I am at present . . ."

"In spite of all that?" He pointed out of the window to two soldiers limping painfully by on sticks.

"Yes—in spite of all that. One gets accustomed to that—and one's doing something. After all, Derek, you get accustomed to death and mutilation up there in front. It doesn't affect you. . . ."

"No, not to the same extent as it did. In a way, I suppose not at all. But you—you were so different." He thoughtfully drained his tea cup, and set it down again, and for a space neither of them spoke.

"I can't help laughing at the comparison," said Margaret suddenly. "Five years ago you and I were sitting in Rumpolmayer's, surrounded by sugar cakes, being smart."

"They're doing that now in London except for the sugar cakes."

"We shouldn't have been silent for a moment, and we should have enjoyed ourselves thoroughly . . . I wonder—"

"It was our only standard, wasn't it?"

"And now we can sit over a cup of weak and nasty tea—without milk and not talk for effect. . . . What's going to happen, Derek, to you and me afterwards? We can never go back to it?"

"No—you can't put back the clock—and we've grown, Margaret,