"Everybody recognizes now, darling," said the reconciled Nancy a few days later, "that Doggie is a top-hole, splendid chap. But I think I ought to tell you that you're boring Durdlebury stiff." Peggy laughed. It was good to be engaged to a man no longer under a cloud. "It will all come right, dear old thing," she wrote to Doggie. "It's a cinch, as the Americans say. You'll soon get used to it--especially if you can realize what it means to me. 'Saving face' has been an awful business. Now it's all over. Of course, I'll accept the two-seater. I've had lessons in driving since you went away--I had thoughts of going out to France to drive Y.M.C.A. cars, but that's off for the present. I'll love the two-seater. Swank won't be the word. But 'a parting gift' is all rot. The engagement stands and all Durdlebury knows it..." and so on, and so on. She set herself out, honestly, loyally, to be the kindest girl in the world to Doggie. Mrs. Conover happened to come into the drawing-room just as she was licking the stamp. She thumped it on the envelope with her palm and, looking round from the writing-desk against the wall, showed her mother a flushed and smiling face. "If anybody says I'm not good--the goodest thing the cathedral has turned out for half a dozen centuries--I'll tear her horrid eyes out from their sockets!" "My dear!" cried her horrified mother. * * * * * Doggie kept the letter unopened in his tunic pocket until he could find solitude in which to read it. After morning parade he wandered to the deserted trench at the end of the camp, where the stuffed sacks, representing German defenders, were hung for bayonet practice. It was a noon of grey mist through which the alignments of huts and tents were barely visible. Instinctively avoiding the wet earth of the parados, he went round, and, tired after the recent spell of physical drill, sat down on the equally wet sandbags of the model parapet, a pathetic, lonely little khaki figure isolated for the moment by the kindly mist from an uncomprehending world.