SCENES IN THE GREAT WAR
rising to a sublime but heartbreaking cheerfulness for the last farewell. " Nearly time for you to go, Robert, if you are to get to the barracks by six. . . . Betty? Oh, no, pity to waken her. I'll kiss her for you when she awakes and say daddy promised to bring her a dolly from France. . . . Crying? Of course not! Why should I be crying? . . . Good-bye then! Good-bye! . . ."
Or perhaps it is evening in a great house in Belgravia, and Lady Somebody is saying adieu to her son. How well she remembers the day he was born! It was in May. The blossom was out on the lilacs in the square, and all the windows were open. How happy she had been! He had a long fever, too, when he was a child, and for three days Death had hovered over their house. How she had prayed that the dread shadow would pass away! It did, and now that her boy has grown to be a man he comes to her in his officer's uniform to say . . . Ah, these partings! They are really the death- hours of their dear ones, and the women know it, although, like Andromache, they go on "smiling through their tears."
With what brave and silent hearts they face the sequel too! The mother of Sub-Lieutenant So-and-So receives letters from him nearly every other week. Such cheerful little pencil scribblings! "Dearest Mother, I have a jolly com-
