The next day in London was like a dream in which things happened with the speed of flashes. It was only at midnight that the Boy and I got any private talk together. His room adjoined mine at the hotel where we were staying for the night, and he came in to me to bring me an offering of sulphur carnations and to show me the dagger he had bought and his miraculously tiny medical outfit. "Why were you so late for the dinner?" I asked him. For he and I had had a dinner engagement and he had kept dinner waiting for at least an hour. "I didn't feel I could go anywhere and smile and talk to people who didn't understand, just after seeing Vera off at Euston. I should have liked to come straight back to you and talk to you quietly all the evening. Look here, let me fasten these carnations on you where I want you to wear them, just as I used to do before the war!" "But I shall be going to bed in half an hour!" "That doesn't matter. It's worth while for you to wear them for half an hour. Tell me what you think of the dagger. It's for hand-to-hand work in the trenches, where there isn't room to use a bayonet." "Ah!" I took the newly bought thing in my hand and looked at it. "When it's done its work bring it back to me without cleaning it. I shall want to keep it always like that." "And here's my little medicine chest. Don't they make things up splendidly? Here's some morphia. You see, many a fellow that's not very badly wounded does himself a lot of harm by wriggling about in his pain before he's picked up. Now, if you've got morphia, you can make the pain bearable and keep quiet." "Yes," I said quite brightly. But I felt curiously sick at heart. "Do you still feel you would rather I did not come to Victoria to see you off to-morrow?" I asked him when we said good-night. "Yes. I don't feel I could stand it. You know, I've always been like that. I've never wanted people who really mattered to see me off at a station. Other people don't count. They can come in crowds. But not you. It'll be hard enough to go, anyhow." "Very well, then, we'll have lunch at Almond's, with that dear Russian friend I want to show you off to, and then you can do the rest of your shopping while I go and keep a business appointment in Farringdon Street. I shall be back here to say good-bye to you at four o'clock." But the business appointment next day in Farringdon Street kept me longer than I had expected it would do and when I came out I could not get a taxicab easily. Agitated, desperate, I had almost run well on to the Embankment before I picked one up and then I dashed up to the hotel steps to find the boy jumping in and out of his own cab with a harassed look on his face. "If I stay another minute I shall be too late," he said. There was no time for me to explain. One moment's clasp of hands--one quick, yet clinging, kiss--and he was gone! Gone from me again--back to fight in France!