"Why ever do you think such a heap of me?" he had asked me more than once. And I had always answered him:
"Because, my boy, you are that strangest and most wonderful thing in all the world—an interesting young man. As a rule, the masculine person isn't worth taking the least notice of till he's thirty—except for athletics. I put that down in a diary once when I was a little girl and I should put the same thing down now. It quite takes one's breath away to find a boy who is athletic and fascinating at the same time. One feels that a drum ought to be beaten through the town. Do you know, you will even be one of the few persons whose weddings are not dull. And weddings, as a rule, are the dullest things that ever happen."
I had spoken so lightly and yet I had meant every word that I had said.
No, I need not be afraid that any of the shoddy, mean-souled women of this world will ever have much chance with a boy of his sort. And if, indeed, he really and deeply loves Vera Brennan, the dream-figure with the amethyst eyes, then she is very much to be envied of other girls.
Was it for her that he had written the little poem which came to my hand at this moment among the letters, and of which he had sent one copy to her and one to me?
He had written it in Ploegsteert Wood soon after he had gone out to the Front, and the lines were as sad and as sweet as the little dark blue flowers that had made them well up out of his heart:
"Violets from Plug Street Wood,
Sweet, I send you oversea.
(It is strange they should be blue,
Blue, when his soaked blood was red;