Her composure gave way then. With a little cry she put her arms round his neck and kissed him.
"You have nothing to reproach yourself with, my dear, my dear! Go!--forget all about women! Go! You've done your best, so fight your best!"
He gave her back her kiss as he might have given it to his sister.
"Yes, Marmie," he said, "I'm beginning to think we really did the right thing, for we can be friends all the same; for the present, at any rate."
His mixture of wisdom and foolishness made her smile at him, as some mothers might smile at a high-spirited boy, and she watched his martial figure go swinging down the street, its flamboyance admissible, admirable, and told herself it was good that he was free both of herself and Lady Amabel.
He sent her a letter from Malta, a very long letter crossed and recrossed. Evidently time had hung heavy on hand once the wonders of being on a steamship had passed. "It will revolutionise war," he wrote, "if we can rely on getting reinforcements regularly. It was different when we had to count on hurricanes and doldrums." And he had a quick eye for weak points in the armour. "Here we are after eleven days' hard steam, and here, so far as any one knows, we are likely to remain. Nothing seems to have been arranged for a forward movement; neither has any provision been made for the hunger of fifteen thousand troops plumped down on a practically desert island. However, they say a cattle transport is immediately expected from Alexandria, so we should have enough beef. Meanwhile, the recent order that neither officers nor men should appear out of uniform gives colour and variety to the streets of Valetta; notably when they are tramped by Yours affectionately."
It was not till late in April that he could send her his impressions of Gallipoli.
"Take the dilapidated out-houses of a real old English farmyard, add to them every seedy, cracked, ricketty, wooden structure to be found in our slums, with a sprinkling of Thames-side huts, and tumble them all down higgledy-piggledy on a bare round hill sloping to the sea, scatter about a few slender white minarets, and you have the town--a place without shade, without water, without food. We can, of course, do the Kilkenny cat trick, but is it not astounding, is it not incredible, that such mistakes should be made? However, an enterprising entrepreneur from Smyrna (Jew, of course) is transforming a battered old ruin into a 'Restaurant de l'Armée Auxiliare' as the legend runs, done with a thumb in lamp-black!"