The Corporal took off his hat and wiped the dew from his forehead. And then with a queer tightening of the throat and breast he scanned earth and sky. They seemed marvelous indeed. He felt them speak to him, to the infinite, submerged senses whose presence he had hardly suspected. Never had he experienced such awe as now in the presence of this peace that passed all understanding. In a little while the silence of the Corporal began to trouble Melia. A cold hand crept into his. "What is it, love?" she said softly. Not daring to look at her, he kept his eyes fixed on the sky. "What is it, love--tell me?" He hardly knew the voice for hers; not until that moment had he heard her use it; but it had the power to ease just a little the intolerable pressure of his thoughts. "I was wondering," he said slowly, at last, "whether it would not have been better never to have been born." She shivered, not at his words, but at the gray look on his face. "Stanning said the night before he went he thought that taking it altogether it would have been better if there had never been a human race at all. I'll never forget that last talk with him, not if I live to be a hundred--which I shall not." The Corporal had begun to think his thoughts aloud. "You see, he knew then that his number was up. I can see him settin' there, Mother, just as you are now, lookin' at that old sunset, his back to that old canal--the Yser, I think they call it--an' stinkin' it was, fair cruel. 'Auntie,' he said suddenlike, 'tell me what brought you into this?' I said, 'No, boy'--just like a child he was as he set there--'it's for me to ask _you_ that question. You're a big gun, you know, a shining light; I'm a never-was-er.' That seemed to make him laugh; he was one that could always raise a laugh, even when he felt most solemn. 'I come of a long stock of high-nosed old Methodists,' he said. 'Always made a thing they call Conscience their watchword and fetish. There was a Stanning went to the stake for it in the time of Bloody Mary; there was another helped Oliver Cromwell to cut the head off King Charles. A poisonous, uncomfortable crowd, and all my life they've seemed to come back and worry me just at the times I should have been most pleased to do without them. People talk about free will--but there isn't such a thing, my dear.'