Page:Walpole--portrait of man with red hair.djvu/293

 "After all," he went on, "if our luck doesn't hold, and we are going to die in the next hour or so, what is it? It's only what millions of fellows passed through in the war and under much more terrible conditions. Imagination is the worst part of that I fancy, and I suggest that we don't think of what is going to happen when this time is over—whether it goes well or ill—we'll fill these twenty minutes with every decent thought we've got, we'll think of every fine thing that we know of, and every beautiful thing, and everything that is of good report."

"All I pray," said Dunbar, "is that I may have one last dash at that lunatic before good-bye. He can have a hundred Japs around him but I'll get at him somehow. Harkness, you're a brick. I brought you into this. I had no right to, but I'm not going to apologise. We're here. The thing's done, and if it hadn't been for that rotten fogBut you're right, Harkness. We'll think of all the ripping things we know. With me it's simple enough. Because the beginning and the middle and the end of it is Hesther. Hesther first and Hesther second and Hesther all the time."

He didn't look at her, but stared out of the window.

"By Jove, the sun's coming. It's been up round the corner ever so long. It will just about hit the