suddenly became intensely real and shone with a splendour that he had never suspected. Originally he had been pitchforked by his father into the army, and had left it to seek music. Sense of duty had made it easy for him to return to it at a time of national peril; but during all the bitter anxiety of that he had never, as in the light of the perception that came to him now, as the wind whistled round him in the dim lit darkness, had a glimpse of the glory of service to his country. Here, out in this small, evil-smelling cavern, with the whole grim business of war going on round him, he for the first time fully realised the reality of it all. He had been in the trenches before, but until now that had seemed some vague, evil dream, of which he was incredulous. Now in the darkness the darkness cleared, and the knowledge that this was the very thing itself, that a couple of hundred yards away were the lines of the enemy, whose power, for the honour of England and for the freedom of Europe, had to be broken utterly, filled him with a sense of firm, indescribable joy. The minor problems which had worried him, the fact of millions of treasure that might have fed the poor and needy over all Britain for a score of years, being outpoured in fire and steel, the fact of thousands of useful and happy lives being sacrificed, of widows and orphans and childless mothers growing ever a greater company--all these things, terrible to look at, if you looked at them alone, sank quietly into their sad appointed places when you looked at the thing entire. His own case sank there, too; music and life and love for which he would so rapturously have lived, were covered up now, and at this moment he would as rapturously have died, if, by his death, he could have served in his own infinitesimal degree, the cause he fought for. The hours went on, whether swiftly or slowly he did not consider. The wind fell, and for some minutes a heavy shower of rain plumped vertically into the trench. Once during it a sudden illumination blazed in the sky, and he saw the pebbles in the wall opposite shining with the fresh-falling drops. There were a dozen rifle-shots and he saw the sentry who had just passed brushing the edge of his coat against Michael’s hand, pause, and look out through the spy-hole close by, and say something to himself. Occasionally he dozed for a little, and woke again from dreaming of Sylvia, into complete consciousness of where he was, and of that superb joy that pervaded him. By and by these dozings grew longer, and the intervals of wakefulness less, and for a couple of hours before he was roused he slept solidly and dreamlessly.