"Nicky, do you understand Michael's poems?" He remembered his mother's apology for not understanding them: "Darling, I _do_ see that they're very beautiful." He remembered how he had wished that they would give up the struggle and leave his poems alone. They were not written for them. He had been amused and irritated when he had seen his father holding the book doggedly in front of him, his poor old hands twitching with embarrassment whenever he thought Michael was looking at him. And now he, who had been so indifferent and so contemptuous, was sensitive to the least quiver of his mother's upper lip. Veronica's were the only eyes that were kind to him; that did not hunt him down with implacable suggestion and reminder. Veronica had been rejected too. She was not strong enough to nurse in the hospitals. She was only strong enough to work from morning to night, packing and carrying large, heavy parcels for the Belgian soldiers. She wanted Michael to be sorry for her because she couldn't be a nurse. Rosalind Jervis was a nurse. But he was not sorry. He said he would very much rather she didn't do anything that Rosalind did. "So would Nicky," he said. And then: "Veronica, do _you_ think I ought to enlist?" The thought was beginning to obsess him. "No," she said; "you're different. "I know how you feel about it. Nicky's heart and soul are in the War. If he's killed it can only kill his body. _Your_ soul isn't in it. It would kill your soul." "It's killing it now, killing everything I care for." "Killing everything we all care for, except the things it can't kill." That was one Sunday evening in October. They were standing together on the long terrace under the house wall. Before them, a little to the right, on the edge of the lawn, the great ash-tree rose over the garden. The curved and dipping branches swayed and swung in a low wind that moved like quiet water. "Michael," she said, "do look what's happening to that tree." "I see," he said. It made him sad to look at the tree; it made him sad to look at Veronica--because both the tree and Veronica were beautiful. "When I was a little girl I used to sit and look and look at that tree till it changed and got all thin and queer and began to move towards me. "I never knew whether it had really happened or not; I don't know now--or whether it was the tree or me. It was as if by looking and looking you could make the tree more real and more alive." Michael remembered something. "Dorothy says you saw Ferdie the night he died." "So I did. But that's not the same thing. I didn't have to look and look. I just saw him. I _sort_ of saw Frank that last night--when the call came--only sort of--but I knew he was going to be killed. "I didn't see him nearly so distinctly as I saw Nicky-" "Nicky? You didn't see him--as you saw Ferdie?" "No, no, no! it was ages ago--in Germany--before he married. I saw him with Desmond." "Have you ever seen me?"