Those nightmarish early days of the great war slowly succeeded one another, and the mother and daughter grew perturbed over the change they saw creeping over their man. He talked hardly at all now. All the old cheery, kindly good humour which had provided half the sunshine of their lives seemed to be disappearing and giving place to a queer, nervous, morose sort of depression. It was as if their man lived a double life. Clearly he was much affected, even absorbed, by some mental process which he never so much as mentioned to them. Morning and evening they saw him, and yet it was as though he was not there, as though he lived and had his being in some other world, aloof from the old cosy, familiar, shared world in which they had always been together. The house-wifely eye of his mother noted with something like alarm that his bedroom candlestick required a fresh candle every day. One had been wont to serve him for a fortnight. Always, she thought he would unburden himself when he kissed her good-night. But he said never a word; and the nerve strain in the little household, which had been so quietly happy and bright, became almost unendurable. Then the end came, with the beginning of the third week in September. The evening was extraordinarily peaceful and fine. The sister and a girl friend were at the little cottage piano. The visitor had a rather rich contralto voice, and sang with considerable feeling. In the middle of her third song the master of the house rose abruptly and walked out of the room, closing the door sharply behind him. The song was one of those called a "recruiting song." Late that night, when the visitor had departed, the brother apologised to his mother and sister for leaving them so abruptly, and spoke of a sudden headache. And the next evening he brought home the devastating news that he had enlisted, and would be leaving them next day for a military depot. The news was received in dead silence. In some mysterious way neither of the women had contemplated this as possible. For others, yes. For their man--the thing was too wildly, remotely strange to be possible. There was his business; and, besides--It was merely impossible. And now he was an enlisted soldier, he told them. But, though they hardly suspected it, not being given to the practice of introspection, their man was not the only member of the little household in whom a fundamental and revolutionary change had been wrought by the world-shaking news of the past six weeks. In the end the women kissed their man, and the central fact of his astounding intelligence was not discussed at all. They proceeded direct to practical, material arrangements. But when the time came for her good-night kiss, the mother said, very quietly, "God bless you, dear!"; and the sister smiled and showed a new pride through the wet gleam of her eyes.