“Not to-night, dear. I’m dreadfully sleepy—bit tired, you know.” “Oh, all right. Good-night.” “Good-night, darl—” The last syllable was cut off by the sharp closing of the flat door. Winterbourne walked back to Chelsea. The street lamps were very dim. For the first time in his life he saw the stars plainly above Piccadilly. In the King’s Road he heard the warning bugles for an air raid. He got into bed, extinguished the light, and lay there listening, wide awake. To his shame he found the shell-fear came back as the Archies opened up, and he started each time he heard the thud of a bomb. They came closer and one crashed in the next street. He found he was sweating. Elizabeth did not get back until three. Reggie and she had taken shelter in the Piccadilly Hotel. Winterbourne was still awake when she came in, but did not call to her. * * * * * His leave came to an end, and he spent five weeks of vague routine at his Depot. He hated coming back to barrack-room life, and did not like the men he was with. They were all Expeditionary men, but strangely different from what they were in the line. Most of the comradeship had gone; they were selfish, rather malicious to each other, and servilely flattered the N.C.O.’s who could get them passes. They seemed to think about nothing except getting passes out, so that they could meet girls or go to pubs. They grumbled ceaselessly. Some of them occasionally told hair-raising War stories, which Winterbourne thought quite probable, though he refused to accept their evidence as conclusive. He always remembered one story, or rather episode, related by a Sergeant in the Light Infantry: “We ’ad a bloody awful time on the Somme. I shan’t forget some of the things I saw there.” “What things?” asked Winterbourne. “Well, one of our orfficers laid out there wounded, and we see a German run up with one of those stick bombs, pull the string and stick it under the orfficer’s head. ’E was wounded in both arms, and couldn’t move. So ’e ’ad five seconds waitin’ for his ’ead to be blowed off by that bomb sizzlin’ under ’is ear. We ’adn’t time to get to ’im. Some one shot the German and then some o’ our chaps picked up a wounded German orfficer and threw ’im alive into a burning ammunition dump. ’E screamed something ’orrible.” * * * * * From the depot he was sent to the Officers’ Training Camp with two days’ leave. He managed to get Fanny and Elizabeth to meet, and had lunch with them on the day he left. They both saw him off from Waterloo, and then parted outside the station. The months of dreary Training in the cold dreary camp dragged by. He had two days’ Leave in the middle of the course, then “passed out” as an officer, and was sent on Leave again, with orders to wait until he received official notice of his appointment. * * * * *