"I smiled at her smile. Shy pretences were not for her. I came a step or so nearer with a conversational air. 'I have known this view,' I said, 'since I was a boy of ten. But I did not know anyone else set any value upon it.'
"'Nor I,' she said. 'I came to look at it perhaps for the last time,' she vouchsafed. 'I'm going away.'
"'I'm going away too.'
"'Over there?' she asked, and nodded her head to where the land of France hung like a cloud in the sky.
"'In a week or so.'
"'I'll get to France too. But not so soon as a week or two. But I am going into the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps and I know I shall get over there at last. I join up to-morrow. How can one stay at home with all you boys out there, getting——'
"She was going to say getting 'killed.' But she caught the word back and finished it with, 'Getting into all sorts of danger and trouble.'
"'One has to go,' I said.
"She looked at me with her head a little on one side. 'Tell me,' she said. 'Do you want to go?'
"'Not a bit. I hate the whole monstrous business. But there's no way out. The Germans have put it on us and we have to go through with it.'