The morning post brought me a letter from Michael ’written in the mud.’ It contains a most amazing suggestion. He asks me to try to find an old house ’such as his soul loveth’ and make a home. Oh, how he must have misunderstood my letters and thought because I frivolled and told him all our stupid jokes that I am happy. How can he imagine I could even contemplate making a home in England without him when it has been the dream of our lives to do it together. Surely he knows by now that ’Home’ for me is just that particular bit of mud in Flanders in which his dear feet are embedded, and that any place without him is exile, that life, till he returns, is merely marking time. I don’t care if I am talking like a little Bethel.... Ross thinks it’s a topping idea. Even Nannie didn’t help me. When I told her, all she said was, ’But of course you will if Master Michael wants you to.’ I felt, as I sometimes used to as a child, that ’every one’s against me,’ and I decided to walk my devils off. I went downstairs and found Ross reading. ’Going out?’ he asked. ’Yes, will you come?’ ’No, arm’s bothering,’ and he took up his book again. I went for a long tramp, down the quiet lanes and through the little spinneys, but there was no harmony—the old ’washed’ feeling wouldn’t come. I slipped into the Intercession Service at the little church and tried to pray for Ross and Michael and all the others. War seems very near in England, only a few miles off—those guns—that one hears sometimes in the night. I thought as I sat in church of all the death and desolation, the suffering and the broken hearts and tears. A great horror of the war came over me and a great rebellion. Why does God allow such things? How can I think of Him as a beneficent Being when the world is swamped with cruelty, blood, and separation? I feel like Tommy Vellacott. I don’t love God now. I only believe in Him. When I got home my feet were soaked and my throat sore, so I went upstairs early. I felt better in bed, and decided that I _would_ try to find a house if it would give Michael the least scrap of happiness. If he would feel ’less anxious’ about me in a house of our own instead of rooms, why a house it shall be. I grew quite excited and interested (as my feet got warmer), planning the details of our dream—an old, old house, standing in a big garden with long, low rooms full of oak furniture, seventeenth century, for choice, with lots of flowers and sunshine in the summer, and books and candlelight and glowing fires for the winter evenings. But how awful it would be if, when Michael saw it for the first time he should say,— ’This the dream house?—what a nightmare!’ Then Ross came in to say good-night. ’Better?’ he queried. ’No, but I’m going to get up to-morrow,’ I said defiantly.