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Then came the time for my leaving Radchurch. I had been appointed to a junior but very responsible post at the War Office, which, of course, entailed my living in London. Even my week-ends found me engrossed with my work, but at last I had a few days’ leave of absence. It is those few days which have ruined my life, which have brought me the most horrible experience that ever a man had to undergo, and have finally placed me here in the dock, pleading as I plead to-day for my life and my honour.

It is nearly five miles from the station to Radchurch. She was there to meet me. It was the first time that we had been reunited since I had put all my heart and my soul upon her. I cannot enlarge upon these matters, gentlemen. You will either be able to sympathize with and understand the emotions which overbalance a man at such a time, or you will not. If you have imagination, you will. If you have not, I can never hope to make you see more than the bare fact. That bare fact, placed in the baldest language, is that during this drive from Radchurch Junction to the village I was led into the greatest indiscretion–the greatest dishonour, if you will–of my life. I told the woman a secret, an enormously important secret, which might affect the fate of the war and the lives of many thousands of men.

It was done before I knew it–before I grasped the way in which her quick brain could place various scattered hints together and weave them into one idea. She was wailing, almost weeping, over the fact that the allied armies were held up by the iron line of the Germans. I explained that it was more correct to say that our iron line was holding them up, since they were the invaders. “But is France, is Belgium, never to be rid of them?” she cried. “Are we simply to sit in front of their trenches and be content to let them do what they will with ten provinces of France? Oh, Jack, Jack, for God’s sake, say something to bring a little hope to my heart, for sometimes I think that it is breaking! You English are stolid. You can bear these things. But we others, we have more nerve, more soul! It is death to us. Tell me! Do tell me that there is hope! And yet it is foolish of me to ask, for, of course, you are only a subordinate at the War Office, and how should you know what is in the mind of your chiefs?”

“Well, as it happens, I know a good deal,” I answered. “Don’t fret, for we shall certainly get a move on soon.”

“Soon! Next year may seem soon to some people.”

“It’s not next year.”

“Must we wait another month?”

“Not even that.”

She squeezed my hand in hers. “Oh, my darling boy, you have brought such joy to my heart! What suspense I shall live in now! I think a week of it would kill me.”

“Well, perhaps it won’t even be a week.”

“And tell me,” she went on, in her coaxing voice, “tell me just one thing, Jack. Just one, and I will trouble you no more. Is it our brave French soldiers who advance? Or is it your splendid Tommies? With whom will the honour lie?”

“With both.”

“Glorious!” she cried. “I see it all. The attack will be at the point where the French and British lines join. Together they will rush forward in one glorious advance.”

“No,” I said. “They will not be together.”

“But I understood you to say–of course, women know nothing of such matters, but I understood you to say that it would be a joint advance.”