"It'll be a different world, Ann, when they all come back," she said. "Them what 'ave been left be'ind all through will find lots missing what they look for. And them what come back won't come back the same. It'll never be the same again, any of it; let's 'ope it'll be better." * * * * * _They_ were coming back. The Mother-City of the Empire woke, silent of traffic, decked for a day that knew no sufficient parallel, the day when the thousands of her sons--those who had gone in their ones and twos, their single battalions--should march back from vast adventure in the full majesty of their corporate soldier-life. The London Divisions were coming back from the War, were marching for the last time at full strength. And the London streets were tunnels of gay flags, walled with black masses of citizens kept clear from the sanded roadways. From every steeple the bells tossed out their exuberant rejoicing. In every breast of the millions there congregated was a surge of emotion that exhaled in one sustained murmur of the gladness for which there are no words but which fills the eyes and chokes the throat. They were coming! The thrilling blare of instruments of brass; the heart-stirring tap and roll and beat of the drums; the intoxicating rhythmic swinging lilt and crash; the brave gay runs of melody, sublimely simple, that bring the tears; the solid, even tramp of thousands who march as one--and the leading files were passing in a storm of cheers, a madness of waving hands. For the last time they passed shoulder to shoulder in the familiar ranks, marching as they had marched for all the years of exile, marching as they had marched down the fatal roads to Loos and Gommecourt, Guillemont and all those rubble heaps where the bravest and the dearest of the greatest city of the world died for the fragment of a village and for England. Rifles at the slope, bare bayonets asserting the ancient privileges that they had won, O so dearly, the right to flaunt, the heavy weather-stained pack on the sturdy shoulders, the steel helmets awry with the tilt of long-familiar use, the brown strong faces gleaming with their smiles--so they marched, not any more under the thunder of the guns, but in a frenzy of voices where the madly rioting bells were lost.