"I remember another coming to me just before the assault, and handing me a sealed letter addressed to his mother. What he said was a lyric poem, but, as usual, he didn't know it. He just muttered: 'Padre, you might look after this: I may not get an opportunity of posting it.' So English that! A Frenchman would have put his hand on his heart and exclaimed: 'I die for France and humanity.' This reserved English child said: 'I may not get an opportunity of posting it.' My God, they're wonderful!" Monty stared across the stream at the thousand lights of Devonport and Plymouth. He was listening to the voices in the lounge singing: "When you come to the end of a perfect day"; and he waited to hear the song through, before he pursued: "There was one youngster who, the morning of an attack, gave me a long envelope. He said: 'I'll leave this with you, padre. It's my--it's my--' And he laughed. Laughed, mind you. You see, he was shy of the word 'will'; it seemed so silly...." Monty stopped; and finally added: "Neither did that boy know he was a Poem." "Go on," said Doe, "I could listen all night." "It's a lovely night, isn't it?" admitted Monty. "Inspires one to see only the Beauty there is in everything. Isn't there Beauty in Major Hardy's black eye?" "It's a Poem--_what_," laughed Doe. "You may laugh, but that's just what it is. He said that his heart beat at one with the heart of a junior subaltern; and it does that because it's the heart of a boy. And the heart of a boy is matter for a poem." "By Jove," said Doe, "you seem to be in love with all the world." "So I am," Monty conceded, pleased with Doe's poetic phrase; "and with the young world in particular." "I think I could be that too," began Doe-- Doe was carrying on the conversation with ease. I left it to him, for these words were winning eternity in my memory: "I could forgive them everything." With a sense of loneliness, and that I had lost my anchor in those last days of the old world, I felt that one day I would unburden myself to Monty. I would like an anchor again, I thought. The same idea must have been possessing Doe, for he was saying: "Somehow I could forgive everything to those fellows you've been telling us about, but I'm blowed if I can forgive myself everything." And here Monty, with the utmost naturalness, as though so deep a question flowed necessarily from what had gone before, asked: "Have you _everything_ to be forgiven?" It is wonderful the questions that will be asked and the answers that will be given under the stars. Doe looked out over the water, and moved his right foot to and fro. Then he drew his knee up and clasped it with both hands. "Everything," he said, rather softly. And, when I heard him say that, I felt I was letting him take blame that I ought to share with him. So I added simply: "It's the same with both of us."