'The other lieutenant who was with him,' said Pamela, 'told us he
was in splendid spirits the day before; and then at night, just
before they started, Desmond was very quiet, and they said to each
other that whatever happened that night they never expected to see
England again; and each promised the other that the one who
survived, if either did, would take messages home. Desmond told him
he was to tell me, if he was killed--that he'd "had a splendid
life"--and lived it "_all out_." "She's not to think of it as cut
short. I've had it _all_. One lives here a year in a day." And he'd
only been seven weeks at the front! He said it was the things he'd
seen--not the horrible things--but the glorious things that made
him feel like that. Now he did believe there was a God--and I must
believe it too.'
The tears ran down her face. Arthur held the quivering hands close
in his; and through his soldier's mind, alive with the latest and
innermost knowledge of the war, there flashed a terrible pre-vision
of the weeks to come, the weeks of the great offensive, the storm of
which might break any day--was certain, indeed, to break soon, and
would leave behind it, trampled like leaves into a mire of blood,
thousands of lives like Desmond's--Britain's best and rarest.
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