Mufti. H. C. McNeile

out her hand.

      "Why, Derek," she said, "I was just thinking of you."

      Vane, his right arm tightly bound in a sling, sat down beside her.

      "I thought you looked pretty weary," he laughed. "Jove! but it's great seeing you again, Margaret … ! And the peace of it all." He waved his left hand round the deserted beach. "Why, it's like old times—before the world went mad" … He fumbled with his cigarette case, until she took it out of his hand, and struck a match for him.

      "What ward are you in?" she asked, when he had made himself comfortable.

      "Number 13; got here yesterday."

      "I come on night duty there to-night. What's your trouble?"

      "Machine-gun," he answered briefly. "A nice clean one through the shoulder. And the man beside me took the next bullet through his heart." He laughed shortly. "What a gamble—what a dam silly gamble, isn't it?"

      She looked thoughtfully out to sea. The train of ideas his sudden appearance had interrupted was still half consciously occupying her mind.

      "Four years, isn't it, since we met?" she said after a while.

      "Four centuries, you mean. Four wasted centuries. Nothing will ever be the same again."

      "Of course it won't. But don't you think it's just as well?" She faced him smilingly. "There was so much that was all wrong, Derek; so much that was rotten."

      "And do you think that four years' insanity is going to prove the remedy?" Vane laughed cynically. "Except that there are a few million less men to carry on the rottenness"—

      Margaret shook her head. "We wanted something to wake us up; it's been drastic, but we're awake."

      "And what most of us want is to go to sleep again. Don't you feel tired, Margaret, sometimes?"

      "Yes—I suppose I do. But it's the tiredness that comes with doing—not drifting. … It's we who have got to make the new Heaven and the new Earth, Derek … "

      Again Vane laughed. "Still as idealistic as ever, I see. Six months after peace we shall be scrambling and fighting and snarling again—after jobs and money and work."

      Margaret Trent was silent, tracing a pattern in the sand with her finger. "The worry of scrambling after a job is not likely to hit you very hard," she said at length.

      "Which is perhaps as well," he returned lightly; "for I'm certainly too weary to take the trouble. I shall go away, if I'm alive to do it, to the South Sea Islands and live on fruit. The only proviso is that it should be sufficiently ripe to drop into my mouth, and save me the trouble of picking it."

      The girl turned and looked at him suddenly. "You've got it rather bad, old boy, haven't you?"

      "Got what?" he asked slowly.

      "Mental jaundice," she answered. "Your world askew."

      "Do you wonder?" he returned grimly. "Isn't the world askew?"

      "And if it is, someone has got to put it back."

      "That's what the little boy said when he pulled the chest of drawers over on top of him and lay struggling under it. But he couldn't do it himself. It's got beyond us, Margaret—and God seems to have forgotten. There is just a blind, malignant Fate running the show."

      She looked at him gravely. "You're wrong, Derek—utterly wrong. The game is still in our hands, and we've got to keep it there. What are you smiling at?"

      "I was wondering," he answered, "whether the last time I was told I was wrong, the sentence would have been concluded similarly. Unfortunately, the speaker died in the middle, thereby proving his contention."

      "Oh! but you're little," she cried, striking her hands together. "Don't you see that you've got to look beyond the individual—that you've got to think Big?"

      "We leave that to the newspaper men," he retorted cynically. "Our smiling heroes; our undaunted soldiers! They are heroes, those Tommies; they are undaunted, but it's because they've got to be. They're up against it—and the Juggernaut of Fate knows he's got 'em. And they know he's got 'em. They just eat and drink and are merry for to-morrow they. … Ah! no; that's wrong. We never die out here, Margaret; only the other fellow does that. And if we become the other fellow, it's so deuced unexpected I don't suppose it matters much."

      "But, we've got to go through with it, haven't we?" she said quietly.

      "Of course we have," he answered with a laugh; "and the knowledge of that fact cuts about as much ice with the men in the mud holes up there as brave little Belgium or suffering little Serbia. I tell you we're all dazed, Margaret—just living in a dream. Some of us take it worse than others, that's all. You want the constitution of an elephant combined with the intelligence of a cow to fight these days."

      "And yet," she said with a grave little smile, "under-lying it all, there's the big ideal surely. … If I didn't think that, if I didn't know that, I … I couldn't go on."

      "To which particular ideal do you allude?" he asked cynically. "The League of Nations; or the triumph of Democracy, or the War to end War. They all sound so topping, don't they? received with howls of applause by the men who haven't had their boots off for a week." He thumped the sand savagely. "Cut the cackle, my dear girl; cut the cackle. This little performance was started by a few of the puppets who thought they had a winning hand, and the other puppets called a show down. And then the game passed out of their hands. They write books about it, and discover new Gods, and pass new Acts of Parliament—but the thing takes no notice. It just goes on—inexorably. Man has been dabbling with stakes that are too big for him, Margaret. And the trouble is that the cards up in the trenches are getting mighty tattered."

      She looked at him curiously. "I'd never have thought it would have taken you like that, Derek … Not quite as badly."

      "You formed your opinion in the bad old days, didn't you?" he said lightly. "When we danced and made love at the Grafton Galleries." She flushed a little, but did not lower her eyes. "Such a serious girl you were too, Margaret; I wonder how you ever put up with a brainless sort of ass like me."

      "Because I liked you," she answered quietly, and suddenly it struck Vane, almost with a feeling of surprise, that the girl sitting beside him was more than attractive. He wondered why he had let her slip so easily out of his life. And the train of thought once started seemed a not unpleasant one. … "You'll get it back soon, Derek—your sense of proportion. You've got to."

      "So that I can help build the new Heaven and the new Earth," he laughed.

      "So that you may help build the new Heaven and the new Earth," she repeated gravely rising to her feet. "I must go back or I'll miss my tea."

      "Have a cup with me in the village." Vane scrambled up and fell into step beside her. They passed Monsieur still snoring, and Madame nodding peacefully over her knitting, and crossed the deserted promenade. Then in silence they walked up into the main street of the little town in search of a tea shop.

      "Do you realise, Margaret," he remarked as they sat down at a small marble-topped table, "that I haven't seen or spoken to a woman for six months? … Heaven help us! Aren't there any cakes?"

      "Of course not," laughed Margaret, "nor milk, nor sugar. There's a war on up the road. You want about ten drops of that liquid saccharine." In the sunny street outside, soldiers in various stages of convalescence, strolled aimlessly about. An occasional motor car, containing officers—on duty, of course—slowed down at the corner opposite and disgorged its load. A closer inspection of one of them might have revealed a few suspicious looking gashes in the upholstery and holes in the mud-guards. Of course—shrapnel—but, then shrapnel did not occur by the sea. And on what duty could officers from the shrapnel area be engaged on at Paris Plage? … However, let us be discreet in all things.

      In a few hours that shrapnel scarred car would be carrying its freight back to Boulogne, where a table at the restaurant Mony had already been secured for dinner.