Henry said:

"Sit down, my dear old chap," and Anthony sat down with a jerk, as if some one had pulled him.

"I don't know if you would like to run over the terms of Tom's will," Henry suggested. "I suppose we must dip into business some time or other, but perhaps-"

"Run over anything you like now," said Anthony. He leaned back in his arm-chair and closed his eyes, but he was n't asleep. He followed Henry's excellent account of business affairs with his old clear-cut attention. Henry was greatly relieved at the questions Anthony shot out at him. He went on to speak of Pannell.

"It would n't be a bad thing if you were home for a time to look after things," Henry suggested. "Father has lost grip. You'll notice a difference in him, and in mother, too. The strain upon those who remained at home has been greater perhaps than you fellows quite realize." Henry sighed a little reproachfully. He wanted Anthony to understand that he had not been the only one to suffer; he felt that self-pity would be bad for a man of Anthony's type. "I must n't weaken him by my

sympathy," Henry reminded himself.

"Yes," said Anthony, without opening his eyes. "If people realized it, it must have been-I was going to say worse for them; but mercifully we 're so built that what we don't see reaches only the most imaginative. Knowledge and realization seldom meet. I see that now. I used to believe, as a doctor, that I knew something about pain; but of course I did n't. I knew as much about it as people know of an earthquake shock from reading about it in a newspaper. My nerves were untouched."

"I have always thought doctors must be rather insensitive," said Henry, complacently. "Frankly I have never been able to stand the sight of suffering. I suppose things were pretty rotten over there for you?" As Anthony did not answer, Henry added tactfully, "You must tell me all about it some time when you feel more up to the mark, and things get easier to talk about."

Anthony's eyelids flickered; the lines between his lips and his mouth were as deep as furrows.

It was obvious that with his usual good sense he agreed with Henry that it was better to postpone the history of his captivity.

Still, Henry did not want to postpone it entirely. He was curious to be told something about it-how many meals one got a day, and what amount of exercise one was allowed to take. He wanted to hear the kind of things one could afterward talk over comfortably at the club with the other fellows.

But Anthony had lost the faculty of realizing what was expected of him in conversation. He did n't follow the line of Henry's thoughts. He began abruptly:

Did

"Those were awfully good cigarettes you kept sending me. Wonderful what a civilizing thing a cigarette is! some fellows good, you know, just to look at them; kept them up to the mark. 'Pon my word, I should n't wonder if it helped 'em to be straight more than their prayers. What one wants, you

know, out there is some point to hold on to, some point outside oneself. Religions that push you inside yourself make a shocking mess of it, and all religions do it too much. What you want is to get out, no matter how small the point you 're aiming at; then you 're safe-I mean that 's your chance of keeping sane. Of course it's only a chance."

Henry cleared his throat, nervously. "The Young Men's Christian Association," he said, "has really done wonders in this war. Is is one of the charities I made a point of backing up. I quite agree with you that the social element in religion is extremely important. The church has overlooked it shockingly. I put down its comparative failure to its inability to deal with its congregations socially."

Anthony opened his eyes and stared at Henry. He looked as if he did not know what his brother was talking about. Apparently he had not been referring to the church.

The door burst open.

"I can't help it, Mary! No matter what Mr. Henry said, I will seeTony!"

She was in his arms; when he hear her voice he had got up and felt for as if he were blind.

It was Daphne; of course s done exactly what they had for her not to do. Her eyes

him, fierce with tenderness; he could hardly meet them. He felt her arms tighten round him.

"Ah, they 've hurt you! they 've hurt you!" she gasped.

Anthony tried hard to hold himself together. He kept telling himself that he must n't make an ass of himself before Henry. Daphne pushed him back into his chair and knelt beside him, gazing at him with the piercing eyes of mercy and love. There was no use trying to hoodwink Daphne. She saw what war had done to Anthony; she saw nothing else.

Henry hovered ineffectually in the rear of the situation; he tried hard to stop its being a situation, but Daphne overpowered him. She took no notice of the halves of inconspicuous sentences which escaped from his lips except to say, after a moment or two, casually over her shoulder, as if he were n't a member of the family and her host, "You'd better go, Henry."

If Anthony had lifted his little finger to keep him, Henry would have stayed; but Anthony did not look in his direction either. His lips had started trembling; he held his elbow on his knee and his hand over his eyes. Henry tiptoed out of the room as if he had inadvertently strayed into a prayer-meeting. Daphne took Anthony in her arms again.

"Oh, what have they done to you!" she murmured. "They have eaten half your life."

Then she began to cry terribly, and it gave back Anthony all his self-control to see her cry He laughed at her, and patted the ck of her obstinately untidy curls ey were just like his o only ma of spun gold. His turned

row.

I suppose they 're all right, are n't they? Henry would have told me if they were n't."

"Yes, yes, yes," said Daphne, quickly; "everything 's quite all right." Her sobs had subsided now, and she searched through his pockets to find the handkerchief she ought to have had the sense to bring with her.

"Something 's changed," said Anthony, sharply. "What is it, Daphne? You 're hiding something from me."

"No, no, not changed," whispered Daphne. "I'm not changed, Tony; only I did n't mean to tell you to-night. Don't you see how old I am, how monstrously, awfully old?"

Anthony studied her beautiful, radiant face with keen, questioning eyes.

"You 've turned into some kind of grown-up woman at last, have n't you?" he asked slowly. "Hullo! what's that on your finger?"

"Yes," she said, "it is really. Is n't it funny? I can't get used to it. I did n't want to be happy a bit by myself without you, but he was in the Flying Corps, and I was so anxious. We were married last June. I made them all swear not to tell you. I censored their letters for months for fear of its dropping out. You see, I knew, if you were with me, you'd be glad. O Tony, does n't it seem wonderful! It's over, and he 's all right. I keep saying that instead of my prayers all day. 'It is over, and he 's all right.'

Anthony nodded.

"Yes," he said; "yes, I suppose so. It 's over and it 's all right, either way you look at it perhaps."

They were silent for a moment, then she said quickly:

"O Tony darling, Tom was killed at

once.

Jim found out for me; I can prove it to you. Tell me you believe me? You know I would n't rest till I found out. Jim went over and saw the major. You know I would n't lie to you. You do believe me, Tony?"

Anthony was not looking at her; he was looking straight into the heart of the fire.

"Yes," he said in a perfectly level voice; "yes, I believe you. I say I say, Daphne, d' you think Henry 'd mind if I kept a light in my room all night?"

CHAPTER III

ANTHONY Would not have admitted that he had a creed, because he thought creeds unscientific; but if you habitually act up to certain unspoken principles, they become dogmas. Anthony's creed ran as follows:

"Play your best whether you are likely to win or not. Never let any one down for the sake of your own convenience; never lie; face disaster readily, even if you could by exercising a little ingenuity evade your share of it. Back whatever you believe in except your own mistakes. Own up to a blunder instantly without the emphasis of egoism. Do not involve other people in your actions, and do not be involved by them, and let the end of your work have the same quality, as its beginning."

It was an excellent creed, full of selfrespect and armed at all points against the inroads of reality; the kind of creed that gives a man peace at the last, unless he has had too bad a time in the interval. It had no mercy in it either for himself or for others. Prison shook it to its foundation. Anthony had not allowed for a life that was a hideous nightmare beneath the plane of selfcontrol, nor for a moral chaos without rules. There was nothing he could act upon; he simply suffered as those under the harrow of acute physical pain suffer, without horizon.

Incidents in Anthony's hospital career flashed into his mind with a new meaning. He remembered a woman dying in childbirth who had told her agonized husband with unfaltering mendacity that it was n't nearly so bad as she had expected. Anthony had admired her then, but he had not thought her superhuman; he had believed that people could always bear pain properly.

The last words of a boy of nineteen crushed in a street accident came back to him: "I don't want to live; it 's too cruel to care about." At the time Anthony had believed this remark to be a proof of the lack of discipline in the lower classes.

He knew now that there are moments in which it is a miracle to behave properly, when life becomes simply too cruel to care about. He felt that there

was a power which sometimes saved people at these moments, but that it was not a virtue inherent in themselves; and he lost a little of his self-respect.

The other prisoners taught Anthony that kindness was more necessary than skill. It was n't enough to do things for them; many of them were beyond the more direct aids of science, and even if they had not been, Anthony had not the proper means for assisting them.

What was necessary, if he was to be of any use to his fellow-prisoners, was for him to involve himself in their sufferings. It was precisely what Anthony had made a point of avoiding throughout his career. He had to put aside his personal fastidiousnesses and to overcome his love of independence.

At first the other men were afraid of Anthony's self-control, and they had left him alone in consequence, and Anthony had to destroy this salutary fear to which he owed his privacy. Nothing but the fact that he hated being useless gave him the courage to persevere. He wanted to work. He did not love his fellow-prisoners; they maddened him. They had had codes, too, once, but either they had not taken their codes as seriously as Anthony had taken his, or their power of control was slighter. They grumbled without ceasing, quarreled readily, and were often .disgusting.

Only one or two of them were really complaining, quarrelsome, or disgusting men; these were the things that happened to them from outside, through the gigantic pressure of adverse circumstance playing upon their unnourished bodies. They could not help themselves.

In time Anthony realized the power of adversity, and it made it much easier to get on with his fellow-prisoners; he saw that their temper was no more to blame than their indigestion. Even their vices, or their endless references to vice, were merely like the outbreak of a tedious delusion. The difference between them and Anthony was that Anthony could help himself. It ceased to be their self-control that mattered; his became vital. If that went, he could be of no use to anybody. Anthony guarded his self-control as if it were

the elixir of life. He measured it out by inches; when he left it menaced, he retired into absolute silence. It was the only thing he could retire into; there was no space for solitude except in his own soul.

It was a long and difficult task, and Anthony never got to the end of it; but long before he realized that he was succeeding, every one in the camp came to him with their troubles. They saw that he had a margin of strength to deal with the affairs of other people, and most of them had become men without margins.

There were plenty of damaged bodies for Anthony to treat, and added to these were the more complicated cases, broken hearts, bad habits, and the deadly collapse of the will. These attacked Anthony's inner citadel, and found him at a loss for supplies. He tried hard to evolve comfort for his patients from his scanty spiritual stores, because he had discovered that very unhappy men cannot live without spiritual comfort even when they are being half-starved. Men were going to pieces because they missed religion just as much as because they missed bread. It was even more disintegrating. The religion that they missed had no definite form; it was that of human ties, traditions, and the obligations of love. The prison rules did not take the place of these obligations, nor did quinine act as a substitute for love.

There was no give and take between their former existence and their present one. They could not send anything home except their hopes, and after a time these were broken by the endless monotony of expectation. Anthony fought against despair as if it were the German Empire. It became part of his profession. He had always fought death as if it were despair, and now he fought despair as if it were death. But his methods had to be more empirical.

"You'll have a hell of a time if you don't keep straight," he reminded his menaced patients. "A much worse hell than if you do." But he soon found that this was not a successful argument. Self-preservation has to be an instantaneous need before it can resist despair.