A week after that meeting at the Front I was in Dunkirk when I ran into the old duck of a mother waiting outside the big grey church, towards dusk.
But now she is sorrowful, poor dear, a cloud has come over her bright, generous face, with its affectionate black eyes, and tender lips.
"He has been ordered to the trenches near Ypres!" she whispers sadly.
"And your daughter," I gasp out.
"Hush! Here she comes. My angel, with the heart of a lion. She has been in the church to pray for him! She would go alone."
Of our three faces it is still the girl wife's that is the brightest.
She has changed, of course.
She is no longer staring with dazzled eyes into her own bliss.
But the illumination of great love is there still, made doubly beautiful now by the knowledge that her beloved is out across those flat sand dunes, under shell-fire, and the time has come for her to be noble as a soldier's bride must be, for the sake of her husband's honour, and his little one unborn.