"I hope this finds you as it leaves me at present in the pink. Dear Liz, i am doing very well and i will tell you a secret—i am going to be rekermended for the V.C. becos i done so well in the trenches. i don't feel a bit fritened wich is nice, and, dear Liz, i hope to be made Lance Corpril soon as my officer is so ..."
And here it ended, this letter from a liar. I balanced it on my knee and wondered what to do with it. Should I tear it up and write to the girl to tell her the truth—that her lover was a liar and a coward? Should I tear his letter up and just announce his death? For some minutes I hesitated, and then I put his half-finished letter in an envelope and added a note to tell her.
"He died like a soldier," I finished. "His letter will tell you better than any words of mine how utterly without fear he was."
And I wish no other lie were heavier on my conscience than is the lie I told to her.
XI
THE CITY OF TRAGEDY
What does it matter that the Cloth Hall and the Cathedral are in ruins, that the homes and churches are but rubble in the streets? What do we care if great shells have torn gaping holes in the Grande Place, and if the station is a battered wreck where the rails are bent and twisted as bits of wire? We do not mourn for Ypres, for it is a thousand times grander in its downfall than it was ever in the days of its splendour.
In the town, the houses are but piles of stone, the streets are but pitted stretches of desolation, the whole place is one huge monument to the memory of those who have suffered, simply and grandly, for a great cause. Round the town run the green ramparts where, a few years ago, the townspeople would stroll of an evening, where the blonde Flemish girls would glance shyly and covertly at the menfolk. The ramparts now are torn, the poplars are broken, the moat is foul and sullied, and facing out over the wide plain are rows of little crosses that mark the resting-places of the dead.