No, I need not be afraid that any of the shoddy, mean-souled women of this world will ever have much chance with a boy of his sort. And if, indeed, he really and deeply loves Vera Brennan, the dream-figure with the amethyst eyes, then she is very much to be envied of other girls. Was it for her that he had written the little poem which came to my hand at this moment among the letters, and of which he had sent one copy to her and one to me? He had written it in Ploegsteert Wood soon after he had gone out to the Front, and the lines were as sad and as sweet as the little dark blue flowers that had made them well up out of his heart: "Violets from Plug Street Wood, Sweet, I send you oversea. (It is strange they should be blue, Blue, when his soaked blood was red; For they grew around his head. It is strange they should be blue.) Violets from Plug Street Wood-- Think what they have meant to me! Life and Hope and Love and You. (And you did not see them grow Where his mangled body lay, Hiding horror from the day. Sweetest, it was better so.) Violets from oversea, To your dear, far, forgetting land; These I send in memory, Knowing You will understand." "Your dear, far, forgetting land!" Oh, the reproach in those words! And do we not, most of us, deserve that reproach? I took out his sword from the drawer in which I had wrapped it away in silk, and I very nearly bowed myself before it in my passion of reverence. Strange! That one should regard as so sacred a thing that is meant to kill! Of all such things, it is only the sword that is held holy. Nobody reverences a revolver, while a dagger is mean and sly and a rifle is nothing in particular, like a gardening tool. But a sword is a glory and a joy, and now, as I handled the sword of the boy of my heart, I could have laughed for sheer delight in all the splendid things that it stood for. What a pity that it should have become a mere show thing, wanted only on parade and never taken out to the Front! As I stood holding the sword, my husband came into the room with a newspaper in his hand. He is a man who can hardly ever be seen without a newspaper in his hand. But this time his face showed that something new and grave had happened. "Gretton is dead," he announced to me. "He was killed by a shell at Festubert five days ago." I caught my breath sharply as my eyes met his. "Gretton?" I exclaimed; and my voice sounded thin in my own ears.