local and otherwise). She often wore a little worried frown, and was growing rather thin, on account of the habits of this unfortunate and scattered people. One of them had been their guest since November; she was in the drawing-room now, a plump, dark-eyed girl, knitting placidly and with the immense rapidity noticeable on the Continent, and not to be emulated by islanders without exhaustion.

Alix's uncle Gerald (a special constable, which was why he need not bother about his blinds much) stood by the small fire (they were wholesome people, and not frowsty) with an evening paper, but he was not reading it, he was talking to John.

For among them, the centre of the family, was John; John wounded and just out of hospital and home on a month's sick-leave; John with a red scar from his square jaw to his square forehead, stammering as he talked because the nerves of his tongue had been damaged. Alix, watching from the garden, saw the queer way his throat worked, struggling with some word.

They were asking John questions, of course. Sensible questions, too; they were sensible people. They knew that the conduct of this campaign was not in John's hands, and that he did not know so much more about it than they did.

The room, with its group of busy, attractive, efficient people, seemed to the watcher in the dark piny garden full of intelligence and war and softly shaded electric light. Alix narrowed her eyes against it and thought it would be paintable.

3

The dark round eyes of the Belgian girl, looking out through the window, met hers. She laughed and waved her knitting. She took Alix always as a huge joke. Alix had from the first taken care that she should, since the moment when Mademoiselle Verstigel had arrived, fluent with tales from Antwerp. It is a safe axiom that those who play the clown do not get confidences.

The others looked out at her too when Mademoiselle Verstigel waved. They called out 'Hullo, Alix! How late you are. John's been here two hours. Come along.'

Alix limped up the steps and in at the French window, where she stood and blinked, the light on her pale, pointed face and narrowed eyes. John rose to meet her, and she gave him her hand and her crooked smile.

'You're all right now, aren't you?' she said, and John, an accurate person, said, 'Very nearly,' while his mother returned, 'I'm afraid he's a long way from all right yet.'

'Isn't it funny, 

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