Sophie looked at him out of troubled eyes. Her voice shook.
"You will be ordered to the front again?"
He nodded. "Very likely."
"I don't want you to go," she broke out passionately. "You mustn't. Oh, Wes, Wes!"
"Do you think I like the prospect any better?" he said tenderly. "But I am an officer in the Royal Flying Corps, and the war is not over yet. Buck up, sweetheart. I had six months' training, a year in fighting planes, six months in hospital, and barring an occasional spell of uncertain nerves, I am still as good as ever. Don't worry. I was silly to say what I thought, I suppose."
"Nevertheless, it is true," she said. "You may go again and never come back. But I suppose one must face that. Thousands of women have had to face it. Why should I be exempt?"
She wiped her eyes and smiled uncertainly.
"We shall simply have to keep that in the background. I want to forget everything but that you are here and that I'm happy," she whispered, with her arms about his neck. "I want to forget everything else—until it's time for you to go."
"Amen," Thompson replied, and kissed her, and then they went silently, hand in hand down to the swinging bridge with the sun gone to rest below the western sky-line, and dusk creeping softly up over the valley floor.