The war was six months old and Margaret was still a pantry-maid in the private hospital in St. Alphege's Square. She was to be promoted to the wards in a few weeks' time, to fill the place of a V.A.D. who was going out to France. Before taking up her more interesting work, she had been granted a fortnight's leave; the exacting matron realized that the willing horse which works its hardest is one which will eventually collapse under its burden.

Margaret was now visiting an aunt in a northern town, drinking in the keen air of the winter hills and the resin of the pine-woods. She was conscientiously building up her tired system, fitting herself for fresh endeavours; she considered that her brief holiday had been given her for this purpose. Her health and capacity for work were the two assets which she could give to the war; it was as much a matter of duty to nurse that capital and increase it as it was the duty of the engineers on a ship to keep the driving power of the vessel in perfect order.

During her holiday the only form of war-work which she allowed herself to do, except the mechanical one of knitting, was to help at a railway-station canteen, which supplied free meals to all the soldiers and sailors who passed through. The aunt whom she was visiting had the entire responsibility for the free-refreshment-room for one of the shifts for two nights in the week; her shift began at six and ended at nine o'clock. Punctually at nine o'clock another member of the canteen, or "barrow-fund," as it was called, took the responsibility off her hands and kept it until two-thirty a.m. Margaret's aunt asked her to take the place of a helper who had suddenly been telegraphed for to see a wounded brother; who had just arrived at a hospital in Edinburgh.

At the large station, a very important junction, the third-class ladies' waiting-room had been given over to this energetic body of women war-workers, who had converted it into an attractive refreshment-room. Margaret was established behind the buffet in her V.A.D.'s uniform. The wide counter in front of her was covered with cups and plates, piled high with tempting sandwiches and bread and butter, cakes and scones; immense urns, full to the brim with steaming coffee and tea, gleamed brightly on a wide shelf behind her. Everything was in readiness, and there were a few minutes to spare before the first train was due, which would bring a bevy of hungry men into the hospitable room. Margaret used those few minutes to make a tour of inspection; she had to see that plenty of post-cards and writing materials were in evidence on the centre table, that the illustrated papers were conspicuously displayed. The barrow, or the moving refreshment buffet, was already out on the platform; it served the men who had no time to leave their carriages. It was winter, so flowers were scarce, but hardly a night passed but there was a fresh bouquet on the counter and table. The owners of large country-houses saw to that. The dominoes and draught-boards had been forgotten; Margaret put them on the table in the centre of the room. And then, satisfied that all was right, she took up her position again behind the counter. She was to be responsible for the serving of the tea and coffee; the men helped themselves to the contents of the plates. Her aunt attended to the tea and coffee urns, keeping them replenished and their contents in good condition. Margaret's was distinctly the pleasanter work of the two.

The sharp air of the north had brought back the glow to Margaret's eyes and a freshness to her rather London-bleached cheeks. She looked a deliciously fresh and pleasing waitress in her crisp indoor V.A.D. uniform. The red cross on the front of her apron was as becoming to her as a bunch of scarlet geraniums. It was too hot, standing so near the steaming urns, for hats and coats, so she had the advantage of showing her rippling hair. The cosy atmosphere of the room made her forgetful of the severity of the wintry atmosphere outside. Margaret's pretty figure and dark head appearing above the buffet-counter were certainly great assets to the free-refreshment-room. Her aunt, who was a conscientiously undemonstrative woman, felt proud of her niece. She more than once that evening thought to herself what pleasure the girl's beauty would give to the men. It was unfortunately against her principles to allow Margaret to even guess how much she both approved of her and admired her.

Her aunt's thoughts were correct. Margaret's pretty head and her dark eyes were remembered by many an aching heart that night; from her hands the tea and coffee they drank had more flavour than that which was so casually dispensed to them in the army canteens.

"Here they come, Margaret!" her aunt called out, as the door opened and a crowd of khaki-clad figures poured into the room. Most of their faces brightened as they saw the inviting buffet.

They had only twenty minutes in which to enjoy their refreshment and change trains; most of them were going to London. This was only one of the many train-loads of men which would visit the room that night. There were about forty men, pushing and elbowing their way to the counter.

With a sharp-spouted, blue-enamelled tin jug in her hand, Margaret began her work, quickly filling the empty cups on the counter. As fast as her active movements would allow her she filled and refilled the saucerless cups. What seemed a never-ending stream of men pushed forward and tried to get closer to the counter.

"Help yourselves, please, to sandwiches and cakes," came from Margaret's lips every few minutes, for some of the men were shy—she had to keep on repeating the invitation. She had scarcely time to glance at them, or raise her eyes from the cups which she was filling. As there were no saucers, it required a steady hand to prevent the tea from splashing on the counter. Such a large majority of the men took tea that she had to tell them that there was coffee. "Tea or coffee?" she would ask, with quickly raised eyes. "We have both."

There was on these occasions no opportunity for any conversation with the men. Their time was too limited for speech, and she was too busy to distinguish one khaki-clad figure from another. It was only a pair of eyes which she met now and then, when it was possible to raise hers from the extended cup she was refilling. More than once her blue-enamelled jug ran dry, and impatient men had to wait while she replenished it from one of the big urns which were steaming on the shelf behind her. When the jug was quite full, it was so heavy to hold extended, that she had to exercise care not to spill some of its contents on the sandwiches and cake. It was exceptionally difficult not to spill any of it when cups were held high up to be refilled.

One tall man, a late-comer, had with difficulty pushed his way forward; he was waiting to be served. He held up his cup, thinking that it would make it easier for Margaret to reach it. Before filling it, she recollected to say, "Would you rather have some coffee?"

She raised her eyes as she spoke. Some curious sense of the man's more refined personality had made her think that coffee might appeal to him. As she did so, Michael's Irish-blue eyes gazed back into hers.

For a moment the world stood still for Margaret. Her poor heart beat so quickly that her hand gave a spasmodic shake, with the result that a considerable quantity of the tea from the enamelled jug splashed over the brim and drenched a plate of scones.

Michael had not spoken, nor could Margaret. What she had waited so long to ask him could not be called out over a dozen eager heads.

A kilted Scot, broad-faced and broad-kneed, had pushed himself in front of Michael, who recognized that it was his duty to step back from the counter now that his cup was full, and allow the man just behind him to get his chance.

Margaret had to go on filling white cups with tea. She dared not even raise her eyes to see if she could catch sight of Michael above the crowd of khaki figures. It was hopeless now, for another train had brought in a fresh batch of weary, cold, homesick men, all eager for a hot cup of tea. Most of the first-comers had already disappeared; one or two of them were hastily addressing with pen and ink the pencilled postcards which they had written in the train. The writing of many post-cards seemed to afford them great comfort. While Margaret was filling cups as fast as she could, she was often interrupted by men who would hold out a penny and ask if she kept postage-stamps. Stamps were the only things which were not given away in the free refreshment-room; a copper always went into the little red box when a stamp was taken out. The men were eager to get them.

Another voice would ask for a time-table, and another would inquire if she sold pipes; he had lost his in the train and he dreaded the twelve hours' journey which lay before him without the comfort of even his pipe.

All these demands had to be attended to quickly and sympathetically. The twenty minutes which the first batch of men had to spend in the station was almost up. On record nights the canteen had served three hundred men in half an hour. Margaret felt rather than knew that Michael was still in the room, that he was standing behind the first line of men, looking at her. Her heart was throbbing and her mind distracted. How could she reach him? How could she learn where he was going to?

His eyes had told her nothing; they had simply gazed into hers as though he had seen a vision. Of the surprise and relief which hers had afforded him she knew nothing. In the midst of the hurly-burly of hungry, tired soldiers she had met his eyes—that was all. She had scarcely seen his figure.

The place was emptying. Michael, having stayed to the very last second, turned and quickly left the room. Soon there would be a lull, but Margaret could not wait for it. She put down her can as Michael disappeared and moved down the counter to its exit, a little door which opened inwards and allowed her to pass into the room. To reach it she had to brush past her aunt. As she did so, she said as calmly as she could:

"I must fly out to the platform for a few minutes, aunt, even if these men go without their tea—I really must go and speak to a soldier I know."

Her aunt looked at her in astonishment. This new emotional Margaret was so very unlike the reliable V.A.D., whose dignity was one of her individual charms.

"Very well, my dear, I can manage. Go along."

There was no time for more words—indeed, Margaret did not wait to be allowed. She darted out of the refreshment-room like an arrow freed from the bow. She had but one idea, to follow Michael. When the door closed behind her, she gazed up the wide expanse of platform. She caught sight of him, but he was well ahead, and he was walking very quickly. Even if she ran, she doubted if she could catch him. After the heat of the room, the air was bitingly cold. Margaret did not feel it; her eyes were trying to keep Michael's khaki-clad figure in sight.

She tried, but failed, for soon he was lost in the crowd of men who were boarding the train. Bevies of women and girls and children had gathered on the platform to see their relatives leave for the Front. Before Margaret's flying feet could overtake Michael he had jumped into a carriage and was as completely lost to sight as a needle in a stack of hay. He was a common Tommy, as heavily-laden, Margaret thought, as an Arab-porter, with his accoutrements of war. All the window seats in the train had been taken up long before he entered it, so it was quite impossible for her to distinguish him amongst the late-comers who were struggling to find even standing-room.

Margaret stood for a moment or two in breathless despair. What could she do? He was there somewhere, in that very train. She was standing beside it, and yet she could not even see him. She was only wasting time; her sense of duty urged her to return to the hungry men in the refreshment-room. Had she forgotten how eager and longing everyone of them was for something to drink?

Her conscience might urge her, but for this once she was a human, love-hungry girl, as eager to speak to her man as the men were to swallow big mouthfuls of tea. With tear-blinded eyes she saw the train leave the platform; she had allowed herself that extension of time. After all, if the soldiers' throats were starved for moisture, had not the whole of her being suffered a far more acute starvation for many, many months? Her womanhood was crying out for its rights.

As the end of the train was lost to sight, she turned away. She was just the girl he had left behind him, forlorn and desolate. A soldier's wife, who was crying healthily, almost tripped Margaret up as she swung quickly round. Her baby, a tired little fractious creature, was in her arms.

As Margaret apologized to her, the idea came to her to ask the woman where the men in the train were going to.

"Most of them to the Front," the woman said. "I lost my only brother two months ago, and now my man's gone. Oh, this is a cruel war!" Her sobs became heavier. "When my brother went to France, I thought it was a grand thing—I was awfully proud. It's a different thing now." She looked at Margaret keenly. "Has someone you care for gone to the Front? Is he in yon train?" She indicated the vanishing train.

Margaret's eyes answered. The woman saw that she was making an effort to keep calm.

"But he's not leaving his little ones behind him—ye'll no be married?
I've got two at home to keep."

"You have his children—I have nothing," Margaret said enviously.

The woman burst into fresh weeping. Margaret envied her abandonment.

"They are a comfort," she said, "in a way. But they're a deal of trouble and anxiety—ye're well off without them."

The woman looked poor and clean. Half a crown left Margaret's purse and took its place beside the coppers which lay in the woman's. It seemed to her horribly vulgar and insulting to offer the woman money as a form of comfort, but her knowledge of the very poor told her that on a cold northern night, the feeling that an extra half-crown had been added to her income would help. It would "keep the home-fire burning" for a week or so, at least.

With quick feet Margaret retraced her steps to the free refreshment-room. Her selfish absence from her post pricked her conscience. When she entered it she saw that it was almost empty. One man was lying stretched out at full length on a seat; a pillow was under his head and he was fast asleep. He had lost his "connection" and would not be able to get a train until after midnight. He was safe from temptation in the hospitable room. Another man was writing letters at the big table; he had already addressed half a dozen postcards.

Margaret knew that in this quiet interval her aunt would be busy washing up and drying the dirty cups at the wash-basin in the inner ladies' room. She hurried to join her.

"Have I been very long?" she said. "I do feel so selfish."

"No, no, my dear," her aunt said quickly. "I managed quite well—the rush had ceased." She looked at her niece questioningly. "I suppose you recognized a friend?"

"I saw a man, aunt, amongst the soldiers, whom I knew very well in Egypt. He was Freddy's best friend. I haven't seen him since. I wonder if he knows that Freddy is dead? I wanted to speak to him if I could."

"And did you?"

"No." Margaret's voice trembled. "He had got into the train. The men were packed like sardines, and I couldn't find him. It left punctually to the minute—I hadn't much time to look."

Her aunt noticed the emotion in Margaret's voice. The woman in her longed to put a motherly arm round the girl as she stood beside her, but her training and national reserve prevented it. So instead of letting her niece see how generous her sympathy was, she said, in rather a strident voice, the result of her suppressed feeling:

"There is a good cup of coffee waiting for you in the small brown pot, and you'll find some egg-sandwiches on a plate on the high shelf above the tumbler-cupboard. Go and eat them at once, before a fresh lot of men come in."

"Oh, I don't want anything," Margaret said pleadingly. "Let me help you wash all these cups, please do, aunt. I really don't want anything to eat."

"Whether you want it or not, I insist upon your eating it. Go now, at once, don't waste time."

Her niece obeyed meekly. When her aunt talked like that, and brought those tones into her voice, Margaret instantly lapsed back into her childhood. She was once more the little black sheep of Kingdom-come, the little black sheep who, at the death of her parents, had very quickly learned to fear rather than to love the various paternal relatives who had considered it their duty to bring her up in the way a Lampton should go.

If Margaret's aunt could only have brought herself to speak to her niece as she many times spoke to strangers of her, how different things might have been between them! But this God-fearing woman never did. She was too God-fearing and too little God-loving. She still clung tenaciously to the old order of things, to the method of rearing girls and responding to human nature which had been considered wise in her young days.

While she dried the tea-cups, with a genuine feeling of sympathy for Margaret in her heart, for she was convinced that this man's going to the Front had upset her pretty niece, and while Margaret ate her sandwiches and drank her coffee because she had been bidden to do so, Michael's train was carrying him through the dark night. He was sitting in the corridor, on the top of his kit, lost in thought. He had missed his chance of getting a seat in any of the overcrowded carriages by his delay in the free-refreshment-room. But what did it matter? He was accustomed to discomfort, to unutterable hardships.

As he sat there, he heard and saw nothing of his surroundings, for Margaret's eyes and beauty had given him a delicious new world of his own. They had told him that she had always trusted him. They had obliterated the war, and the fact that he was journeying towards it. They had made his pulses throb again with the wine of passion and gay romance. He was an individual once more, enjoying the sweetness of the woman whose love had been so devoutly his.

It seemed so odd that the fresh, clean, proud-looking girl, with the dark hair and the crimson cross on her breast, behind the food counter, was actually the woman who had trembled in his arms under the desert stars, for her very fear of her love for him. She had once been very, very near to him; she had seemed an indispensable part of his life. To-night, standing behind the buffet, although she was materially quite close, she was hopelessly far away. His only privilege had been to take a cup of tea from her hands. A world of fresh experience and emotion had separated them.

For a long time he sat motionless on his kit, dreaming only of Margaret. Now it was of the wonderful things which her eyes had told him; now it was of the distance and circumstances which separated them. Later on he roused himself out of his reverie, for the men in the carriage at whose open door he was sitting were singing, "It's a long, long way to Tipperary"—the song had not yet been depopularized by "Keep the home-fires burning"; it was still sung by soldiers and civilians and gramophones. The lusty, cheery voices brought Michael's mind back to the stern reality of war. He peeped out into the night, lifting up the blind from the window-pane and putting his head under it.

The cold, bleak day had given place to a starlit night, with a high-sailing moon. The snowcapped mountains and distant forests of solemn pine-trees looked serenely indifferent to the material affairs of mankind. Their purity and indifference wounded Michael. How could Nature remain so callously superior, so selfishly peaceful, while he was hurrying to France, to witness cruelties which it had taken the world all its great age to invent and put into action? These cold mountains, rushing streams and hidden glens would just go on smiling in the sunshine by day and sleeping peacefully under the moonlight, while golden youth was sacrificing itself on the altar of Liberty.

As the train rushed on through the darkness, emitting sparks which showed her pace, Michael's thoughts drifted to the old African in el-Azhar and all that he had visualized. As his eyes peered out from the jealously-covered windows and rested on the long line of mountains, high in their snowy whiteness, he repeated the old man's words:

"Why do the heathen so furiously rage together and the people imagine vain things in their hearts? I tell you, my son, it is because they have not the love of God in their hearts."

Yes, why, oh why, did they do it? The world he looked out upon was surely meant for grander and better things? It had nothing to do with bloodshed. And yet, even as he said it, words and voice answered back:

"Pray for fortitude, my son, that moral condition which enables us to meet danger and endure pain with calmness. I tell you to pray for fortitude, for without it you cannot face the future."

As his thoughts were lost in this prayer, he got back his assurance that this war of wars had to be fought in the cause of freedom. He knew that it had to be won by the Allies, to ensure the triumph of right over might. This was the war which was to terminate all wars; the victory of the Allies was to bring about the disarmament of all powerful nations. It was the forerunner of a higher civilization.

He put his head between his hands and rested it on his knees. He knew that his words were true. And yet, had not his old friend in el-Azhar been as sincerely convinced that this war which he had visualized was to be fought for the triumph of Islam? Was he not certain that Allah had ordained it to prove to all countries upon the earth that the Christian nations had shown that their religion was hideous in Allah's sight, that it was a failure, that it had not redeemed mankind?

And Germany! What of Germany? Michael saw, with his vivid imagination and unprejudiced mind, German mothers and fathers praying for their sons who were fighting for the cause of the beloved Fatherland, the cause which they believed was the cause of righteousness. Did they also not pray earnestly and sincerely? Did they, too, not believe that God would be on the side of righteousness?

Why were these agonized parents and brave soldiers to be made to suffer if it was all to be in vain, if their cause was not the just cause? Had they not obeyed the cult of their land and the teachings of their spiritual pastors and masters? He remembered the African's words: "The time draws near when each man will return to the land that gave him birth."

In this war which was raging, all the soldiers who suffered, and the parents who gave up their only-begotten sons to save their countries from extermination—all of them were the victims of circumstance. They were all heroes answering to the call which demanded of them life's highest sacrifice. They were victims of militarism, which must be wiped out of civilization.

Michael became agonized with the hopelessness of answering the questions which stormed his brain. Over and over again he said to himself the words, "Why do the heathen so furiously rage together and the people imagine vain things in their hearts?" And over and over again the answer came, "I tell you, my son, it is because they have not the love of God in their hearts."

He repeated the words almost mechanically until they indefinitely became a sort of refrain which kept time to the thud, thud of the engine, and the rushing noise of the train.

At last, tired out both mentally and physically, he fell asleep. In his dreams Margaret was very near to him. It was the old Margaret, radiant with the new wonder of love, fragrant with the night-air of the Sahara which surrounded them.

The war and its demands were wiped out; the world was back again to the fair free days which knew neither hate nor fear.