Some of my friends were already beginning
to feel their throats with nervous fingers.
"I think so too!" said the officer, when he heard my answer. "England
will be dishonoured otherwise!"
16
The platform was now thronged with young men, many of them being
officers in a variety of brand-new uniforms, but most of them still in
civilian clothes as they had left their workshops or their homes to
obey the mobilization orders to join their military depots. The young
medical officer who had been speaking to me withdrew himself from
his wife's arm to answer some questions addressed to him by an old
colonel in his own branch of service. The lady turned to me and
spoke in a curiously intimate way, as though we were old friends.
"Have you begun to realize what it means? I feel that I ought to weep
because my husband is leaving me. We have two little children. But
there are no tears higher than my heart. It seems as though he were
just going away for a week-end--and yet he may never come back to
us. Perhaps to-morrow I shall weep."
She did not weep even when the train was signalled to start and
when the man put his arms about her and held her in a long
embrace, whispering down to her. Nor did I see any tears in other
women's eyes as they waved farewell.
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