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‘Dying?’ he repeated and ‘Dying?’ How the man managed to circumvent him at every turn! As if it were not enough to have wings and a scar. But to die.

‘Margaret,’ he said with such despair that she gazed at him in swift pity. (He was so young.) ‘Margaret, are you in love with him?’ (Knowing that if he were a woman, he would be.)

‘No, certainly not. I am not in love with anybody. My husband was killed on the Aisne, you see,’ she told him gently.

‘Oh, Margaret,’ he said with bitter sincerity, ‘I would have been killed there if I could, or wounded like him, don’t you know it?’

‘Of course, darling.’ She put the tray aside. ‘Come here.’

Cadet Lowe rose again and went to her. ‘I would have been, if I’d had a chance,’ he repeated.

She drew him down beside her, and he knew he was acting the child she supposed him to be, but he couldn’t help it. His disappointment and despair were more than everything now. Here were her knees sweetly under her face, and he put his arms around her legs.

‘I wanted to be,’ he confessed more than he had ever believed. ‘I would take his scar and all.’