Margretta Scott

From “Side-lights on War”

SHE no longer held him:

In the long dragging evenings

She knew that.

The mirror shouted to her

That she was no longer desirable—

Her hair had lost its color,

Her eyes were dull.

She loathed his perfunctory kisses,

His polite inquiries as to what she had been doing all day.

She loathed him—

Because she loved him.

Then War came.

He went towards it hungrily,

Like a dog to red meat.

Life woke up in him, rubbing its eyes.

In a hot glow of emotion

He remembered what she had been to him,

And in his voice was a tenderness

That kindled beauty within her.

The night before he left she slept in his arms:

And War had given more than it can take away.