the lower valleys grew white as I rode along. But Hilmi Pasha sat in Monastir, pacifying the country; and, looking at me with those eyes so mournful and sincere, he repeated his eulogy

The Independent Review.

upon the Government's generous, nay, magnanimous treatment of its misguided subjects. As I listened, I had a vision of that vast region in Limbo which is called the Officials' Paradise. Henry W. Nevinson.

"Grenaand his

He picked up a new one. dier Guards," he muttered, face lengthened as he looked down the paper. He ran his finger down by the side of the names. "Twenty-fortysixty-eighty-a hundred-hundred and

twenty-thirty-three-six."

Being human, he had already looked at the officers' casualties, and twice he had caught his breath sharply.

The sickening smell of iodoform reeked in the room, and a moan came from the tents in the garden. The assistant called over the names in a low voice.

"Elliot, Mackenzie, and Owen, all slight, in foot. Kane, killed—””

"Kane? Poor fellow, I remember him. Where?"

"Bronchial veins. Hopeless case, he died as we carried him back; secondary hæmorrhage."

And the red list went on in the breathless room, with brief comments here and there, while outside under the poplar trees, the impounded horses in the kraal pawed restlessly and whinnied at the smell of blood.

died doin' 'is duty. A fat lot of use that is to me, ain't it? Don't you go and put yoreself out, Mrs. Perkins, to come and tell me that."

The atmosphere was obviously strained, but silence once more brooded in a small three-pair back in Ermine Row, where, in the midst of a litter of silk-wrapped wire, odds and ends of feathers and filosel, gimp, gold wire and chenile, a stout heavily-breathing woman was staring at a somewhat younger one in a blue cloth skirt, a black cape, and a blackish bonnet with a bit of crape in it.

The hint, though broad, was ignored. "Then you 'ave no children, pore dear," resumed the comforter.

"Thenk Gawd," was the uncompromising response. But Mrs. Perkins, after having obtained a footing in the room of the new widow, was not lightly to be deterred, and she felt that she owed a duty to the Row.

From the front, she looked as if she were sitting on the edge of her chair, but this was not the case. Her small, bright eyes were fixed on Mrs. Kane's face, while the latter impatiently twisted a garish leaf on to a stalk, keeping her eyes resolutely fastened upon her work. After a pause, in which her breathing was the only disturbing element, Mrs. Perkins returned to the attack.

"Then 'e was a good deal older than you, Sarah Kane, and 'e did used to beat you sometimes, didn't 'e, dear?"

Mrs. Perkins had some excuse for not expecting the outburst which followed.

Wife-beating was not generally regarded as a delicate subject in the Row. But Mrs. Kane leaped up, flaming with wrath. "I'll thank yer to go away, Mrs. Perkins, before I spoil yer face fer yer. 'E never so much as lifted 'is 'and to me, and-" Mrs. Kane stopped contemptuously, opened the door with a crash, and stood waiting while her visitor drew her shawl round her with dignity, and prepared to go, feeling that even if she had not been a conspicuous success as a comforter, she had at any rate a good story of Sal's temper for the rest of the street.

Mrs. Kane, dry-eyed and tensely fingering the edge of the table, went on with a flushed face. "And if 'e didit was my fault-mind yer that, my fault every time."

She followed her guest, the sight of whose back seemed to open the floodgates of her temper, out on to the landing, and her shrill voice filled the well of the staircase. "And if Mr. Perkins 'ad 'ad the pluck to comb yore 'air a bit, Mrs. Perkins, you'd be a sight better woman this day . . . an' yer can tell 'im I said so, too . . . an' don't yer come here again a-spyin', Mrs. Perkins."

The latter was some way down the first flight by this time, breathing a little heavily, and gripping the banisters with a knowing determination to get even with the vixen.

Sal returned with a beating heart to her artificial flowers, and the gaudy bits of silk grew into fearful shapes under her feverish fingers. As her temper cooled, her misery, forgotten for the moment, returned. She had just enough imagination to piece together the scene at Belmont, drawing for herself a harrowing and impossible picture, for the details of which she drew upon her recollection of an attempted suicide last summer in the same street. And poor Sal spared herself no agony that ignorance and a

course of cheap fiction could suggest to her.

She allowed herself no relief in tears; she might yet have a visitor-for if you want privacy you might as well seek it in the Aquarium as in Ermine Row-and though she had no intention of admitting anyone, she would have to answer the door.

The minutes passed into hours, and the flowers fell finished from her hands steadily and quickly. She did her work almost more for the solace of the halfattention that she was compelled to give to it, than for the scanty money it would bring.

As the light was fading, there came a knock at the door, and Sal, with her face set like a flint, rose and held it ajar.

"What is it?" she said shortly. "I'm busy. If it's a track, yer can go away."

"I've heard of your trouble, and if I can do anything I hope you will let me know. I am working for the 'Soldiers and Sailors,' which has every right to help you now."

"Thank yer 'm. I won't trouble them. I can make my own living with the flowers, and I ain't got any children."

Sal was obviously still on the defensive, but she moved back into the room with a bad grace, leaving the way clear for Lady Evelyn, who came forward with one hand in her muff, and

played with a piece of silk on the table, keeping her eyes carefully averted from Mrs. Kane.

"I think I knew your husband-years ago before I married-he was Colonel Caryll's servant when he was in the third battalion, I think, and one never forgets a face in the regiment."

Sal's face was a picture of mingled emotions.

"Are you Colonel Caryll's wife 'm?" she asked, irresolutely.

"Why, yes, so you see you mustn't mind my coming to see you."

Sal wheeled round abruptly. "Will you sit down 'm?" As her visitor did so, she looked narrowly at her dress. "Have you 'm-er-lost 'im too?" "No, he goes out next month with the other battalion."

Then in Sal's sore mind it was slowly revealed that, essentially, Lady Evelyn had put on mourning for Private Kane, and her eyes filled with tears.

"You must thank God, 'm, 'e wasn't at Belmont."

"I had a brother there, and I hear that he is wounded-very slightly, I believe," she added; "but you see I have a little right to feel with you."

"M'lady, I'm sorry for that. 'E was Captain Essington, I suppose."

She was talking a little at random, while the great and comforting truth that war is no respecter of persons came to her for the first time. There was a moment's silence.

"I thought you were going to tell me to pray," said poor Sal. "I've turned them all out-I mean all the parsons. What's the use? I want my husband, I don't want anything else. And it's too late now, 'm, ain't it, 'm. It's no good praying for 'im now, 'm, no good at all." Sal's voice was becoming unsteady. "One man comes with a top hat, and 'e tells me that with Gawd all things were possible . . . so I ... I turns 'im out as a fool. And I say it's a wicked thing to come and tell a wom

...

an what's lost 'er 'usband dead and killed, that Gawd can send 'im back again all right."

Lady Evelyn felt that she was on delicate ground. "Perhaps he didn't

quite mean that."

"Well, 'm, I don't know what 'e meant, but it's what he said, anyway, 'tweren't any comfort. I want Kane, and I don't want nothing else. But 'e's a man, an' 'e couldn't understand, 'm, an' Gawd, bein' a man too, can't understand either, can 'E, 'm?"

Lady Evelyn flinched before this startling theological dogma, but felt that it was no time for doctrinal instruction. So, not without some inward thankfulness that there was no one else present, she suggested, timidly, "But, remember the Blessed Virgin." Then the last bitterness of the woman's grief was voiced in the sullen and envious response that was wrung from the heart of the childless.

"She 'ad a child."

For a moment the hopelessness of any consolation that could reach Sal's lonely heart silenced her visitor. Then, moved by an impulse of which she would have thought herself incapable, she said the right word,

"But she lost Him."

In the silence that ensued, Lady Evelyn saw the birth of the only comfort that is real, the comfort that another helps us to make for ourselves. She was a wise woman, and moved across to Sal, saying in a kindly business-like way, "Well, the chief thing now is for you to remember that if I can be of any use to you, I shall be glad to see you-you know where I live-92, Chester Square. And now, good-bye; you must let me help you for the sake of the regiment."

"Good-bye, 'm, I mean my lady. Thank you kindly, I won't trouble you."

And Sal, with wet eyes watched her visitor descend.

She

She went back to her artificial flowers with a little less of her previous sense of friendlessness, but, after all, as she soon found herself afguing to herself, what was the good of expecting any comfort from anyone? knew that Lady Evelyn's husband was still with her, and that she had at least one child. And the relief of the breakdown of a few minutes before was paid for by a redoubled sense of loneliness, though the thought of the Blessed Virgin recurred to her again and again with curious insistence. Perhaps there was, after all, some consolation to be found in the religion she had always regarded as unpractical and suspicious.

The day had been foggy and frosty, but about five it cleared for a time, and Sal collected her flowers into a parcel, and set out to walk to a milliner near Cromwell Road, where her work was always taken. It was the first time she had been out since the news of her husband's death had reached her, and her loss was preached to her by every street lamp and corner in Westminster. She shut her eyes as she passed the Railway Inn, so keenly did she associate the gilt and enamelled glass with Kane; even the worst side of him was a sacred memory ǹow.

She was chewing a bitter cud, indeed, as she turned into Eaton Square; she felt that her misery was greater than she could bear, and the sight of St. Peter's standing snug and respectable at the head of the square seemed only to bring home to her the isolation of her life. There was no understanding there, and no one to whom she could bring the raw edges of her sorrow. Sullen and silent, she went on, hugging her grief, and beholden to no man.

It was a relief to her to be away from the Argus-eyed windows and doors of Ermine Row, and a sense of freedom from the stare of idle curiosity helped her to bend a little before the

stress of her trouble. Lady Evelyn's remark had affected her more than she was willing to admit to herself, and her imagination was stirred by the remembrance of it.

Man was useless. Man had, too, in some indefinable way, colored the invisible powers of the other world with his sex, and had even imprisoned the Mother herself in a halo of neutrality. But, in spite of all, Sal felt blindly that She would understand-that She must understand-once a woman, alwayseven on the steps of the Sapphire Throne, a phrase that had once caught Sal's fancy amazingly-always a wom

an.

Loss had been Her portion too, and Sal wondered in her misery whether the loss of a child was not perhaps as great a loss as even her own.

Jostled here and there on the pavement, without having the spirit to resent it much, the insignificant little figure made its way along, choosing the least frequented sides of the street. It was deadly cold, and Sal had been unwilling to put on her overcoat because it was of a kind of pepper and salt color, and she would wear nothing that she could help that seemed unmindful of the dead man. Also she remembered in a sudden and distinct way, that she and her husband had quarrelled one Boxing Day while she was wearing the coat, and though she had worn it many times since without giving the matter another thought, she now felt vaguely that it would be a kind of disloyalty to wear it now, especially as she remembered the quarrel so distinctly, and the fact that she had had the last word with an insult that she had laughed over afterwards with real satisfaction. Now she remembered that Kane had not struck her for it, as she had quite expected at the time.

The setting sun was low over the end of Cromwell Road, a great ball of red

across with gray and brown film wreaths, half smoke, half fog, passed above the thick lavender haze of the street below. Overhead it was the color of quinine, and the gutters were packed kerb-high with morasses of freezing slush, through which the omnibuses drove their way shoulder-high above the scanty traffic.

Sal was in a state of nervous exaltation that she was unaccustomed to. Her feet were sopped and bitterly cold, her head burned, and the reaction from her three days of repressed misery was physically overwhelming her. The leafless trees outside Tattersall's within their iron railings intensified the dreariness of all around her. She began to sob bittery and helplessly. Her own weakness frightened her, and she crept along the shops on the north side of the street to keep away from the rest of the world as far as she could.

It was the darkest hour of her trouble, for the blankness and emptiness of her future was forced upon her, and her straitened soul cried out in revolt against the injustice of her lot.

"A Reserve man," she muttered, with a sob, as she passed the gabled gate of Trinity Church, too tired and wretched to go on. Blind with tears, she turned up the steps and into the Oratory, where she dropped motionless into a chair.

The dignity of the interior, which in the fading light had lost its tinsel garishness, and loomed over her silent and austere, was a solace in its permanence and peace. The noise of the street outside came dim and muffled, and the incense-laden air had an attraction it might not have had for a more refined pair of nostrils. Tired and soothed, she was content to let her sorrows relax themselves.

After all, she felt here that she was but one unit among a million, and the self-abasement caused by the sense of being in the presence of Infinite Pow

er helped her in some odd way. Her eyes followed mechanically the obelisance of a woman who had risen from her knees and was going out. Perhaps she, too, had been praying like the others-and Sal realized that there were nearly a dozen women in the church, some as poorly dressed as herself-for someone in South Africa. Were they all in the same agony of ignorance?

She remembered the posters outside. The letters that had passed before her eyes almost meaninglessly at the time painted themselves on the darkening walls. "Another Great Victory-Methuen crosses the Modder-Heavy British Losses."

Sal realized that the army to which her husband had been attached was still moving on, and that the stern work of war demanded as many lives now as it had five days before; in a fit of animal jealousy she found herself hoping that these two, each one of them, had lost their dearest-why should she be the only one?

Her eyes swept wearily round the shadowy walls until they lit on the crown of Our Lady of Mercy in the side chapel to the right, and the remembrance of Lady Evelyn's words came to her again, fuller of meaning than before. A paste diamond glinted a steady shaft of green at her, so motionless was she, and she dimly made out the gold draperies of the figure below. Again the uncontrollable desire for sympathy overwhelmed her, and moved by an impulse she hardly understood and could not control, she found herself on her knees before the low balustrade sobbing her heart out to the Woman who had known sorrow too.

For a long time she said nothing; she only rested her hot forehead against the cool marble.

The unspoken prayer seethed to her lips, and she shivered with the stress of her petition, but she knew the folly