'There was a Second Lieutenant in our battalion, an awfully handsome boy--heir to a peerage I think. But he couldn't get a commission quick enough to please him when the war broke out, so he just enlisted--oh! of course they've given him a commission long ago. But his great friend was a young miner, who spoke broad Northumberland, a jolly chap. And these two stuck together--we used to call them the Heavenly Twins. And in the fighting round Hill 60, the miner got wounded, and lay out between the lines, with the Boche shells making hell round him. And the other fellow never rested till he'd crawled out to him, and taken him water, and tied him up, and made a kind of shelter for him. The miner was a big fellow, and the other was just a slip of a boy. So he couldn't drag in his friend, but he got another man to go out with him, and between them they did it right enough. And when I was in the clearing station next day, I saw the two--the miner in bed, awfully smashed up, and the other sitting by him. It made one feel choky. The boy could have put down a cool hundred thousand, I suppose, if it could have done any good. But it wouldn't. I can tell you, darling, this war knocks the nonsense out of a man!' 'But Bridget is a woman!' said a dreamy voice beside him. Sarratt laughed; but he was launched on recollections and could not stop himself. Apparently everybody in his company was a hero, and had deserved the Military Cross ten times over, except himself. He described some incidents he had personally seen, and through the repressed fire with which he spoke, the personality and ideals of the man revealed themselves--normal, strong, self-forgetting. Had he even forgotten the little creature beside him? Hardly, for instinctively he softened away some of the terrible details of blood and pain. But he had forgotten Nelly's prohibition. And when again they had entered the dark wood which lay between them and the cottage on the river-bank, suddenly he heard a trembling breath, and a sob. He caught her in his arms. 'Nelly, darling! Oh, I was a brute to talk to you like this.' 'No,' she said, struggling with herself--'No! Wait a moment.' She lay against him trembling through every limb, while he kissed and comforted her. 'I'm--I'm not a coward, George!' she said at last, gasping,--'I'm not indeed. Only--well, this morning I had about a hundred and seventy hours left--I counted them. And now there are fifteen less. And all the time, while we talk, they are slipping away, so quick--so quick--' But she was regaining self-control, and soon released herself. 'I won't do it again!' she said piteously, in the tone of a penitent child. 'I won't indeed. Let's go home. I'm all right.'