Practically. A very comfortable sort of word; but Doggie's cultivated mind disliked it. It was a slovenly word, a makeshift for the hard broom of clean thought. This infernal "practically" begged the whole question. Jeanne would not have sentimentalized to Mo Shendish about ships passing in the night. No, she wouldn't, in spite of all his efforts to persuade himself that she would. Well, perhaps dear old Mo was a rough, uneducated sort of chap. He could not have established with Jeanne such delicate relations of friendship as exist between social equals. Obviously the finer shades of her letter would have varied according to the personality of the recipient. Jeanne and himself, owing to the abnormal conditions of war, had suddenly become very intimate friends. The war, as she imagined, must part them for ever. She bade him a touching and dignified farewell, and that was the end of the matter. It had all been an idyllic episode; beginning, middle, and end; neatly rounded off; a thing done, and done with--except as a strange romantic memory. It was all over. As long as he remained in the army, a condition for which, as a private soldier, he was not responsible, how could he see Jeanne again? By the time he rejoined, the regiment would be many miles away from Frelus. This, in her clear, steady way, she realized. Her letter must be final. It had to be final. Was not Peggy coming at three o'clock? Again Doggie thought, somewhat wistfully, of the old care-free, full physical life, and again he murmured: "It's all dam funny!" * * * * * Peggy stood for a moment at the door scanning the ward; then perceiving him, she marched down with a defiant glance at nurses and blue-uniformed comrades and men in bed and other strangers, swung a chair and established herself by his bedside. "You dear old thing, I couldn't bear to think of you lying here alone," she said, with the hurry that seeks to cover shyness. "I had to come. Mother's gone _fut_ and can't travel, and Dad's running all the parsons' shows in the district. Otherwise one of them would have come too." "It's awfully good of you, Peggy," he said, with a smile, for fair and flushed she was pleasant to look upon. "But it must have been a fiendish journey." "Rotten!" said Peggy. "But that's a trifle. You're the all-important thing. Tell me straight. You're not badly hurt, are you?" "Lord, no," he replied cheerfully. "Just the fleshy part of the leg--a clean bullet-wound. Bone touched; but they say I'll be fit quite soon." "Sure? They're not going to cut off your leg or do anything horrid?" He laughed. "Sure," said he. "That's all right." There was a pause. Now that they had met they seemed to have little to say. She looked around. Presently she remarked: "Everything looks quite fresh and clean." "It's perfect." "Rather public, though," said Peggy. "Publicity is the paradoxical condition of the private's life," laughed Doggie. Another pause.