"I don't know why you didn't know that before," said little Gwenna, feeling for once in her life so much older and much wiser than her chum. "What makes you know it now, Leslie?"
"The War, perhaps. Everything's put down to the War nowadays.... But it has simplified things. One knows better what's what. What one must keep, what one can throw overboard," said Leslie Long. "Everything is changed."
Gwenna thought for a moment of telling her that one thing did not change. Love!
Then she thought that that was not quite true, either.
In its own way Love, too, was changed by this War.
"There's more of it!" thought Gwenna simply.
For had not her own love to her absent lover burned with more steady a flame within her ever since the morning when she had seen him depart to take his own share in the struggle? And so she guessed it must be with many a girl, less ardently in love than she had been, but now doubly proud of her man—and her soldier. She thought of the other hurried War-bridals and betrothals all over the country. She thought of the gentler voice and manner that she had noticed between the husbands and wives among the cottagers down here. They realised, perhaps, how many couples were being swept apart by War. Yes, this thought seemed to give Man and Woman an added value in the eyes of each other, Gwenna thought. She thought of the gradual disappearance of the suffragette type with her indictments against Man. She thought of the new courtesy with which every woman and girl seemed to be treated in the streets and tubes and omnibuses by every man who wore the livery of War.
Of the two things greater than all things in this world, one fulfilled the other. And, because War was in the world again, it was bringing home undeniably to man and maid alike that "the first is Love."
Then Gwenna sighed from her heart.
How long? How much longer would it be before she could see her own lover again?