The taxi had reached the garden-square. They got out and Michael prodigally overpaid the driver. The man took the money.
"I'd have driven you for nothing, sir," he said delightedly, "if the car was my own. I was young once, and so was the missus." He saluted respectfully.
As they turned into the quiet little garden, Michael said happily,
"Why, Meg, what a dear little bit of France! How did you discover it?"
"My hospital's just across the square, and so is my bedroom. This is my sitting-room."
They found a quiet seat amongst the tombstones and sat down, a typical resort for a Tommy and his sweetheart. When they had been seated for a few moments, Michael said:
"It's a far cry to the Valley, and the little wooden hut, and the tombs of the Pharaohs, Meg."
Meg's eyes swept the garden-square; the laburnum-tree was shedding flakes of gold from its long tassels; they were falling like yellow rain in the spring breeze.
"Very, very far," she said as her eyes pointed to the smoke-begrimed tombstones. "Here the homes of the dead seem so forsaken, so humble. Death has triumphed. In the Valley the dead were the eternal citizens, their homes were immortal. The dead have no abiding cities here, and even the palaces of the living will be crumbled into powder before Egypt's tombs show any signs of wear and decay."
Their thoughts having turned to Egypt, beautiful memories were recalled. Often broken sentences spoke volumes. Their time was very short, so short that Love devised a sort of shorthand conversation, which saved a thousand words.
And so for the rest of Margaret's precious hour they talked and dreamed and loved. There was so much to explain and so much to tell on both sides that, as Margaret laughingly said, they would both still be trying to get through their "bit" when Michael would have to leave for the Front.