How superb will be the coming generation, begotten under such glorious circumstances, with nothing missing from their magnificent heritage, Love, Patriotism, Courage, Devotion, Sacrifice, Death, and Glory! * * * * * A week after that meeting at the Front I was in Dunkirk when I ran into the old duck of a mother waiting outside the big grey church, towards dusk. But now she is sorrowful, poor dear, a cloud has come over her bright, generous face, with its affectionate black eyes, and tender lips. "He has been ordered to the trenches near Ypres!" she whispers sadly. "And your daughter," I gasp out. "Hush! Here she comes. My angel, with the heart of a lion. She has been in the church to pray for him! She would go alone." Of our three faces it is still the girl wife's that is the brightest. She has changed, of course. She is no longer staring with dazzled eyes into her own bliss. But the illumination of great love is there still, made doubly beautiful now by the knowledge that her beloved is out across those flat sand dunes, under shell-fire, and the time has come for her to be noble as a soldier's bride must be, for the sake of her husband's honour, and his little one unborn. "Though he fall on the battle-field," she says to me softly, with that sweet, brave smile on her quivering lips, "he leaves me with a child to live after him,--his child!" And of the three of us, it is she, the youngest and most sorely tried, who looks to have the greatest hold on life present and eternal. CHAPTER LI A LUCKY MEETING To meet some one you know at the Front is an experiment in psychology, deeply interesting, amusing sometimes, and often strangely illuminative. Indeed you never really know people till you meet them under the sound of guns. It is at Furnes that I meet accidentally a very eminent journalist and a very well-known author. Suddenly, up drives a funny old car with all its windows broken. Clatter, clatter, over the age-old cobbled streets of Furnes, and the car comes to a stop before the ancient little Flemish Inn. Out jump four men. Hastening, like school-boys, up the steps, they come bursting breezily into the room where I have just finished luncheon. I look! They look!! We all look!!! One of them with a bright smile comes forward. "How do you do?" says he. He is the chauffeur, if you please, the chauffeur in the big golden-brown overcoat, with a golden-brown hood over his head. He looks like a monk till you see his face. Then he is all brightness, and sharpness, and alertness. For in truth he is England's most famous War-Photographer, this young man in the cowl, with the hatchet profile and dancing green eyes, and we last saw each other in the agony of the Bombardment of Antwerp. And then I look over his shoulder and see another face. I can scarcely believe my eyes.