"I don't agree with the people who say that khaki is not becoming," I said to his father after he had gone. "It must be becoming, because, since the war broke out, I've had a stronger and stronger impression every day that England is full of good-looking men."
"I must see what Edward Brennan looks like in his khaki," I thought.
But Edward was still waiting for his commission and so was in his ordinary clothes. But the thrill of the war was in him and it was a new Edward who was with us now and sat at the piano, and with his long fingers brought from the keys music that had a strange new meaning in it.
"Edward, in a way I am sorry that you are going soldiering, too. It will be a great pity if anything happens to you—because, if you live, you'll be a great musician one day, when you wake up."
"When I wake up?"
"Yes. You're as cold as marble now. You want to thaw. But you're beginning to thaw already. What is that sad, sweet thing you've been playing over and over again this morning?"
"Oh, don't you know? It's my setting of Roland's poem, 'L'Envoi.'"
"Roland's poem? I didn't know he wrote any poems."
"No. He's afraid to show them to you, because he says they're not good enough yet. But I liked this one so much that I couldn't help setting it to music."
And he played the music over again, singing the words as he did so: