‘I daresay there’ll be a raid to-night,’ said Desmond, ’it’s so bright and still.  Put down that lamp a moment, Pamela.’

She obeyed, and he threw away his cigarette, went to one of the windows, and drew up the blinds.

‘Listen!’ he said, holding up his hand.  Pamela came to his side, and they both heard through the stillness that sound of distant guns which no English ear had heard—­till now—­since the Civil War.

‘And there are the searchlights!’

For over London, some forty miles away behind a low range of hills, faint fingers of light were searching the sky.

’At this very moment, perhaps,’—­said the boy between his teeth—­’those demons are blowing women and children to pieces—­over there!’

Pamela shivered and laid her cheek against his shoulder.  But both he and she were aware of that strange numbness which in the fourth year of the war has been creeping over all the belligerent nations, so that horror has lost its first edge, and the minds, whether of soldiers in the field, or of civilians at home, have become hardened to facts or ideas which would once have stirred in them wild ferments of rage and terror.

‘Shall we win, this year, Desmond?’ said Pamela, as they stood gazing out into the park, where, above a light silvery mist a young moon was riding in a clear blue.  Not a branch stirred in the great leafless trees; only an owl’s plaintive cry seemed to keep in rhythm with that sinister murmur on the horizon.

‘Win?—­this year?’ said the boy, with a shrug.  ’Don’t reckon on it, Pam.  Those Russian fools have dished it all for months!’

‘But the Americans will make up?’

Desmond assented eagerly.  And in the minds of the English boy and girl there rose a kind of vague vision of an endless procession of great ships, on a boundless ocean, carrying men, and men, and more men—­guns, and aeroplanes, and shining piles of shells—­bringing the New World to the help of the Old.

Desmond turned to his sister.

’Look here, Pam, this time next week I shall be in the line.  Well, I daresay I shan’t be at the actual front for a week or two—­but it won’t be long.  We shall want every battery we’ve got.  Now—­suppose I don’t come back?’

‘Desmond!’

‘For goodness’ sake, don’t be silly, old girl.  We’ve got to look at it, you know.  The death-rate of men of my age’ (men!—­Desmond, a man!) ’has gone up to about four times what it was before the war.  I saw that in one of the papers this morning.  I’ve only got a precious small chance.  And if I don’t come back, I want to know what you’re going to do with yourself.’

‘I don’t care what happens to me if you don’t come back!’ said the girl passionately.  She was leaning with folded arms against the side of the window, the moonlight, or something else, blanching the face and her fair hair.

Desmond looked at her with a troubled expression.  For two or three years past he had felt a special responsibility towards this twin-sister of his.  Who was there to look after her but he?  He saw that his father never gave her a serious thought, and as to Aubrey—­well, he too seemed to have no room in his mind for Pam—­poor old Pam!