And she stooped impetuously to lay her hand on his lips. He kissed the hand, held it, and remained silent, his eyes fixed upon the lake. On that day week he would probably just have rejoined his regiment. It was somewhere in the neighbourhood of Bailleul. Hot work, he heard, was expected. There was still a scandalous shortage of ammunition--and if there was really to be a 'push,' the losses would be appalling. Man after man that he knew had been killed within a week--two or three days--twenty-four hours even!--of rejoining. Supposing that within a fortnight Nelly sat here, looking at this lake, with the War Office telegram in her hand--'Deeply regret to inform you, etc.' This was not a subject on which he had ever allowed himself to dwell, more than in his changed circumstances he was bound to dwell. Every soldier, normally, expects to get through. But of course he had done everything that was necessary for Nelly. His will was in the proper hands; and the night before their wedding he had written a letter to her, to be given her if he fell. Otherwise he had taken little account of possible death; nor had it cost him any trouble to banish the thought of it. But the beauty of the evening--of this old earth, which takes no account of the perishing of men--and Nelly's warm life beside him, hanging upon his, perhaps already containing within it the mysterious promise of another life, had suddenly brought upon him a tremor of soul--an inward shudder. Did he really believe in existence after death--in a meeting again, in some dim other scene, if they were violently parted now? He had been confirmed while at school. His parents were Church people of a rather languid type, and it seemed the natural thing to do. Since then he had occasionally taken the Communion, largely to please an elder school-friend, who was ardently devout, and was now a Chaplain on the Western front. But what did it really mean to him?--what would it mean to _her_--if she were left alone? Images passed through his mind--the sights of the trenches--shattered and dying bodies. What was the _soul_?--had it really an independent life? _Something_ there was in men--quite rough and common men--something revealed by war and the sufferings of war--so splendid, so infinitely beyond anything he had ever dreamed of in ordinary life, that to think of it roused in him a passion of hidden feeling--perhaps adoration--but vague and speechless--adoration of he knew not what. He did not speak easily of his feeling, even to his young wife, to whom marriage had so closely, so ineffably bound him. But as he lay on the grass looking up at her--smiling--obeying her command of silence, his thoughts ranged irrepressibly. Supposing he fell, and she lived on--years and years--to be an old woman? Old! Nelly? Impossible! He put his hand gently on the slender foot, and felt the pulsing life in it. 'Dearest!' she murmured at his touch, and their eyes met tenderly.