sea, with the everlasting circle of the horizon and the half-bowl of the heavens above. 

 In the forest to-day, though the leaves had turned to gold and red and brown, the beeches were still well covered, and overhead we were tented with a russet canopy. 

 I say, at last we found a spot, or rather Zoe, who, with girlish pleasure in the adventure, had run ahead, called to me, and as I write I seem to hear the echoes of "Karl! Karl!" which rang through the wood. When I came up to her she proudly pointed to the place she had found. 

 It was ideal. An outcrop of rock formed a miniature Matterhorn in the forest, and beneath its shelter with the old trees as silent witnesses we sat and joked and laughed, and made twenty attempts to light a fire. 

 After lunch, a little incident happened which had an enormous effect on me; Zoe asked me whether I would mind if she smoked. 

 How many women in these days would think of doing that? And yet, had she but known it, I am still sufficiently old-fashioned to appreciate the implied respect for any possible prejudices which was contained in her request. 

 After lunch, I asked her a question to which I dreaded the answer. 

 I asked her whether, now that the old Colonel had gone to the Somme, whether that meant that she would be leaving Bruges. 

 She laughed and teasingly said: "Quien sabe, señor," but seeing my real anxiety on this point, she assured me that she was not leaving for the present. The Colonel, she said, had a strange belief that once a man had served on the Flanders Front, and especially on the Ypres salient, he always came back to die there. 

 It appears that the Colonel has done fourteen months' service on the salient alone, and is firmly convinced he will end his career on that great burial ground. As we were talking about the Colonel I longed to ask her how she had met him, and perhaps find out why she lives with him, for I cannot believe she loves him, but I did not dare. 

 Strangely enough I found that a curious shyness had taken hold of me with regard to Zoe. 

 I said to myself, "Fool! you are alone with her, you long to kiss her; you have kissed her, first at the dinner-party, secondly when you said good-bye at her flat," and yet to-day it was different. 

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