"Well, you could—and did! I don’t much like being in the same room with people who don’t know I’m there. It’s not safe. You walked straight through me the other afternoon, when you called to collect Marjorie. And the day before that, when I opened the door to you, you wiped your feet on me! I’ve had a wonderful week!" With such blunt shafts of wit as these Miss Lyle ultimately provoked the lovers to a smile. "That’s better!" she said. "Now, next time you come home on leave, give us longer notice, and I will warn Leonard, or somebody, for duty. Then I shan’t feel such an outsider." Roy promised to do so. "You will take care of Marjorie, won’t you?" he added. Miss Lyle favoured him with a gaze of withering wonder. "You have been trying to take care of her yourself most of this week, haven’t you?" she demanded. "I have been doing my best," admitted Roy, cautiously. "Very well, then! What happened? How did it end?" "It ended, I think," confessed Roy, "in her taking care of me!" Liss nodded her bobbed head triumphantly. "That’s it," she said. "That’s what always happens to people who try to take care of Marjie. She grabs them by the neck, puts them in her pocket, and keeps them there! That’s what she’ll do to me again, when you’re gone. It’s no good my pretending I ever do anything for her." "Nonsense!" said Marjorie. "But I’ll tell you what," continued Liss: "I’ll see she doesn’t take care of anybody else while you’re away—if I can. That’s her trouble: she’d take care of the whole army, and navy, and munition people, and Red Cross, and everything, if she was let! But I’ll watch her, and save the leavings for you!" She glanced at the clock, and rose. "Now, children, your Auntie Liss is going to leave you! Tactful—that’s me! When is your train, General?" "Two o’clock," said Roy. "I fancy we sail from Folkestone about six." "Then," inquired Liss, playing a carefully hoarded ace of trumps, "why not go down to Folkestone _now_, both of you, by the morning train? That way you would have her until nearly six, instead of two. It’s all right; don’t thank me!" she concluded pathetically, as Marjorie, without a word, dived into the bedroom for her hat, and Roy began to struggle madly into his equipment. *III* They spent the bleak November afternoon on the Leas at Folkestone. At their feet lay the Straits of Dover, across whose waters British soldiers had come and gone for twenty-six months, and continued to come and go for twenty-five more, without the loss of a single soldier’s life. But they could not see their feet that afternoon: their heads were in the clouds—private clouds, to which we will not presume to follow them. As the autumn darkness fell, they took an early dinner in an almost empty hotel hard by the harbour, talking cheerfully of things that did not matter. Roy ordered champagne, and they drank a silent toast with a fleeting glance over the rims of their glasses.