Harry was serious about the future. "I don’t know exactly what is going to happen," he said. "I’m supposed to be going to Sandhurst in January, but that’s a long time ahead. I seem to see the war swallowing up everything. There’s something to be done here about it, and perhaps it will be for me to do it. But there’s nothing to show yet. I think there won’t be till you go away, my darling. I think there’s nothing that will come in the way of my being with you, and thinking about nothing but you." "Do you think you will have to go and fight, Harry? Oh, surely you’re too young for that, darling!" "I’m not too young to love you." She thought over this. It was one of the things he sometimes said that meant more than it seemed to. She loved those speeches of his, springing from something in him to which she could give all her faith and all her devotion. They helped her to plumb the depths in him, and she had never found anything there that did not make her glad and proud of loving him. This time her pride brought the tears close to her eyes. There was more than the sweetness of young love in this—to be loved as something in full alliance with all the biggest things that a man might be called upon to do in the world, and to which he must bring all that he was and all that he had, even his life itself if it should be required of him. "I shouldn’t want you not to, Harry," she said. He did not tell her of his conviction that the war would claim him. She was his to be protected, and some things she must be spared. When the time came, she would somehow be concerned in it, because she would be concerned in everything that he did, and whatever he should want of her then she would give him. He had as much confidence in her as she in him. "The war is like a great shadow over everything," he said. "We’re in the sunshine just now, you and I—the most glorious sunshine. I don’t think that we need fear the shadow for ourselves. But for others—for some it’s very deep." The shadow seemed to creep closer and touch her heart as he spoke. They were silent for a time, her hand resting in his. The contact strengthened them both, and the shadow passed away from her. For the rest of their time together that morning they made love and built their airy rainbow castles, almost as unsubstantial as those of children. In fact they played with the idea of having Jane and Pobbles to live with them. It hardly seemed fair to be using the cabin in which they had a proprietary share and leave them out of it. They would pass suddenly from grave to gay in this way, and there were many times when the children could have taken a full part in their conversation without being at all in the way.