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 close to Wickham Brand, holding his Sam Brown belt, and staring up into his face.

"Why, you must be—you must beYou are—the tall boy who used to grow out of his grey suits, and wrote mystical verse and read Tolstoy, and growled at civilisation and smoked black pipes and fell in love with elderly artists' models. Wickham Brand!"

"That's right," said Brand, ignoring the laughter of Fortune and myself. "Then I went to Germany and studied their damned philosophy, and then I became a briefless barrister, and after that took to writing unsuccessful novels. Here I am, after four years of war, ashamed to be alive when all my pals are dead."

He glanced at Fortune and me, and said, "Or most of 'em."

"It's the same Wicky I remember," said the girl, "and at the sight of you I feel I've gone back to myself as a tousled-haired thing in a short frock and long black stockings. The good old days before the war. Before other things and all kinds of things."

"Why on earth were you in Lille when the war began?" asked Brand.

"It just happened. I taught painting here. Then I was caught with the others. We did not think They would come so soon."

She used the word They as we all did, meaning the grey men.

"It must have been hell," said Brand.

"Mostly hell," said Miss O'Connor brightly. "At least, one saw into the gulfs of hell, and devilishness was close at hand. But there were compensations, wee bits of heaven. On the whole I enjoyed myself."

"Enjoyed yourself?"

Brand was startled by that phrase.

"Oh, it was an adventure. I took risks—and came