And then with a nod he was gone.

I watched him out of sight, knowing that he had left not for an hour or so but for days. There had been someone with me ever since I had reached England-my mother, my father, Simon. I felt suddenly alone, separated from those I loved. Separated by more than distance.

Turning, I went up to my room and sat down at the little white desk between the windows, intending to write my first letter requesting reinstatement at the Front.

And I found the words wouldn’t come.

Setting the sheets of hotel stationery to one side, I walked out to the balcony and for a while watched the sea, green and blue and, in the distance, almost black. There was a slight haze in the direction of the Seven Sisters, but toward Hastings and France the sky was clear. We were too far away to hear the guns. But I could imagine them. And imagine too the damage they were doing to flesh and bone.

It was difficult to go against my parents’ wishes. We had always been of the same mind about important things. I could understand their feelings. I doubted that they could understand mine. Or was I being selfish and willful, where wiser heads knew better? I told myself that it was the wounded and dying who should be weighed in the balance, not my own wishes.

In the end I put the letter-or what was to be the letter but was now only a blank sheet-in the desk drawer and went down to take my tea in the enclosed veranda. Some hours later I dined alone. I couldn’t have said afterward what I had chosen from the menu or how it had tasted.

There was a woman at the next table. She sat there, staring into space as if her mind were a thousand miles away, picking at her food as if it had no more flavor than mine had had. Fair and rather pretty in an elegant way, she appeared to be older than I was, and I put her age at thirty.