My mind is full of thoughts of Tubby. He has not returned. There is no news of him. He will not return now. He may be a prisoner. He may be lying up forward wounded. He may be sprawled on the ground, like one of these pitiful waxworks by which I am surrounded. Probably we shall never know his fate. Why did he come to the war? What hidden spark of divinity kindled his spirit to a flame? He never let us inspect anything but the earthy side of his nature. His faults, had he lived to be middle-aged, would probably have hardened into vices. He was typical of us—an ordinary, pleasant chap, a trifle specked with blackguardism, impatient of ideals and yet following in their tracks. His worst weakness was his unbalanced attitude towards women; his kindest quality that he was invariably good-tempered and generous. If he realised the possession of a soul, he never talked about it. His last recorded utterance, according to the tank-officer, was an undignified catch-phrase of the streets, “How’s your father?” Yet, incredible, lovable man, he rode out wounded to die for others as simply as if he had hailed from Nazareth. We know nothing of each other, we men who eat and sleep, and suffer, and die together. How little we know was illustrated for me by what I learnt from that newspaper, picked out of a dead man’s pocket this morning. The first I heard of a woman in Heming’s life was that day on the Somme when, thinking he was about to die, he asked me to write to Mrs. Percy Dragott. From time to time after that I saw her portrait in the English illustrated weeklies and gathered that she was playing with war work, taking part in charitable theatrical performances, bazaars for the mutilated, garden-parties for the blinded, etc.,—having a thoroughly enjoyable time and acquiring a reputation for patriotic fervour. The next occasion when her name cropped up was when the Major read aloud to Heming the unconcluded account of a tragedy. In the paper which I found this morning, I read that she was on trial for murder.