"By men of your nervous organization. Your going out would be sheer waste." "Why not?" Does it matter what becomes of me?" "No. It doesn't. It matters, though, that you'll be taking a better man's place." Now Colin really did want to go out and fight, as he had always wanted to follow Jerrold's lead; he wanted it so badly that it seemed to him a form of self-indulgence; and this idea of taking a better man's place so worked on him that he had almost decided to give it up, since that was the sacrifice required of him, when he told Queenie what Eliot had said. "All I can say is," said Queenie, "that if you don't go out I shall give _you_ up. I've no use for men with cold feet." "Can't you see," said Colin (he almost hated Queenie in that moment), "what I'm afraid of? Being a damned nuisance. That's what Eliot says I'll be. I don't know how he knows." "He doesn't know everything. If _my_ brother tried to stop my going to the front I'd jolly soon tell him to go to hell. I swear, Colin, if you back out of it I won't speak to you again. I'm not asking you to do anything I funk myself." "Oh, shut up. I'm going all right. Not because you've asked me, but because I want to." "If you didn't I should think you'd feel pretty rotten when I'm out with my Field Ambulance," said Queenie. "Damn your Field Ambulance!... No, I didn't mean that, old thing; it's splendid of you to go. But you'd no business to suppose I funked. I _may_ funk. Nobody knows till they've tried. But I was going all right till Eliot put me off." "Oh, if you're put off as easily as all that----" She was intolerable. She seemed to think he was only going because she'd shamed him into it. That evening he sang: "'What are you doing all the day, Rendal, my son? What are you doing all the day, my pretty one?'" He understood that song now. "'What will you leave to your lover, Rendal, my son? What will you leave to your lover, my pretty one? A rope to hang her, mother, A rope to hang her, mother....'" "Go it, Col-Col!" Out on the terrace Queenie laughed her harsh, cruel laugh. "'For I'm sick to my heart and I fain would lie down.'" "'I'm sick to my heart and I fain would lie down,'" Queenie echoed, with clipped words, mocking him. He hated Queenie. And he loved her. At night, at night, she would unbend, she would be tender and passionate, she would touch him with quick, hurrying caresses, she would put her arms round him and draw him to her, kissing and kissing. And with her young, beautiful body pressed tight to him, with her mouth on his and her eyes shining close and big in the darkness, Colin would forget. iii Dr. Cutler's Field Ambulance, British Hospital, Antwerp. _September 20th, 1914._