"We will get leave together and be married, Muriel," he urged. "Yes, John but not now--we must go on, these poor things need us. I am almost happy here. I could not sleep in England, knowing what happens day and night!" "Muriel--promise you will take care, I shall be anxious for you." "And you--you are running all the risks. Oh, John, we must come through! Life is going to be so wonderful even yet." He kissed her hungrily, wrapped the rugs round her in the car, and saluted as it carried her away. He waited until the traffic blotted her from view. Then he joined Stevenson who was waiting with his car at the hotel. It was burdened with their luggage, the precious typewriters precariously balanced on the top. They were going south into the British lines and the welter of blood. Antwerp had fallen; nothing could now stop the Germans reaching the coast. And England perhaps. But that was an incredible thought to John. England could not know ruin like this. He looked up at the moon hanging serenely over the flat Belgian countryside. The same moon peered down on English homes and in silent glades where the birds slept. II So ran the drama, act by act, in those epic days. While England waited breathlessly, the terrible tides of war, now sweeping onwards, now refluent, devastated the countryside of Europe. The little fire, lighted in Sarajevo, spread outwards until it lapped countries and capitals and nations in its lurid glow; until the windy plain of Troy, the desert slopes of the Holy Land, the forests of the Caucasian mountains, and the shores of the Tigris and Danube shook with the tramp of men. Month after month, the war spread its leprous hand across the face of splendid courageous manhood. Sometimes, in the agony of his soul, when coming from dressing stations where men held in their entrails, by pools coloured like sunset with the blood and limbs of men and horses, John cried out against the monstrous infliction of pain. Was it not better that the world should crash into another planet, and find the peace of obliteration? And to heighten the useless agony of this drama, came the reports of official squabbles, the blunders of statesmen, the rhetorical recriminations of politicians, hurled from nation to nation with cheap victories of words, while men struggled with mud under a murderous hail of iron.