"_Poor old Marsh! I suppose we'll all go West sooner or later, but somehow Scissors, I can't think of him as dead. He was so full of life, such a tireless beggar and such a fund of fun in him. I'm tormenting myself with the thought that I once behaved rather silly--I cut him on a platform one day, before he joined up. I know it hurt--I wanted it to--he told me so later when I ran across him here. Thank God we put it right. Still, I hurt him, Scissors, and he was too dear a chap for me to behave like that, and I'm coming to think he was right,--the more I see of this bloody mess, with no end to it, and all of us wondering why we stand it._" John put the letter down, numbed. He watched a destroyer through the porthole, passing on, saw a gull wheel and turn, with a silver glint as the sun caught its wings, heard the siren of H.M.S. Oak, speeding on its message-delivering mission; all these things went on about him, yet they were in a picture; only he was the unreal thing. Marsh gone! How could that be with the morning so fresh and active, with so much life about? Surely he would walk in here, and with a laugh, clap him on the shoulder, with something thoroughly absurd to say. Dead? Why--fellows like Marsh could not die! His thoughts flew away to the rambling vicarage. He saw Mrs. Marsh sitting at the piano, under the lamplight; saw Mr. Marsh in his study, pipe going, the "_Nation_" in his hands. Could life go on and Marsh not be part of it? Hours passed before the significance of it became clear to him, but a week passed before he was able to take up a pen and write to Mrs. Marsh. That terrible task performed, he felt now prepared for anything. The world was falling to bits; nothing could be saved. The bad news from the front affected him little. He wondered at the gloomy faces of the men around him. Why be affected by the inevitable? It would all be enacted as relentlessly as in a Greek play. Another blow would come yet, of that he was sure; life was to be wholly disintegrated.