Initial commit of ebook 78882 filesHEADmain

6 files changed, 35165 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f57f44
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,13 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
+*.htm text
+*.html text
+*.png binary
+*.jpg binary
+*.svg text
+*.pdf binary
+*.bmp binary
+*.zip binary
+*.midi binary
+*.mp3 binary
diff --git a/78882-0.txt b/78882-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..473b641
--- /dev/null
+++ b/78882-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,13409 @@
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78882 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+UNCONQUERED
+
+
+
+  "The stars are threshed and the souls
+  are threshed from their husks."
+                              _Blake._
+
+  "Men and angels, ye
+  Whom stain of strife befouls,
+  A light to kindle souls
+  Bear, radiant, in the stain."
+                            _Meredith._
+
+
+
+
+  UNCONQUERED
+
+  _A Romance_
+
+
+  BY
+
+  MAUD DIVER
+
+  _Author of "The Strong Hours," "Far to Seek,"
+  "Lonely Furrow," etc._
+
+
+
+  BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+  HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
+  The Riverside Press Cambridge
+
+
+
+
+  COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY MAUD DIVER
+
+
+  The Riverside Press
+  CAMBRIDGE * MASSACHUSETTS
+  PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+  To
+  MARY
+
+  IN REMEMBRANCE
+  OCTOBER 10TH, 1901
+
+
+  "A turn, and we stand in the heart of things..."
+                                            _Browning._
+
+
+
+
+AUTHOR'S NOTE
+
+The chapters dealing with France, and the incidents connected with
+these, are founded on fact.  I merely mention this because it seems
+to me that the main incident gains in effect from the knowledge that
+it is not mere invention.--M. D.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+BOOK I.--BEL
+
+BOOK II.--THE UTTER PRICE
+
+BOOK III.--VIA CRUCIS
+
+BOOK IV.--VIA LUCIS
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+BEL
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+"Whom does love concern save the lover and the beloved?  Yet its
+impact deluges a thousand shores."--E. M. FORSTER.
+
+
+Sir Mark Forsyth pushed back his chair, left the dinner-table, and
+strolled over to the bay-window.  He drew out his cigarette-case, but
+apparently forgot to open it.  He stood there, looking out across the
+garden, that merged into rocky spaces of heather and bracken, and
+culminated in an abrupt descent to Loch Etive.  Low above the
+darkening hills the sunset splendour flamed along the horizon, and
+all the waters beneath were alight with the transient glory.  But the
+man's face wore the abstracted air of one who dwells upon an inner
+vision.  Though the subdued flow of talk behind him entered his ears,
+it did not seem to reach his brain.  "Bobs," his devoted Irish
+terrier, crept out from under the table, and joining his master, made
+sundry infallible bids for attention, without success.
+
+Presently alluring whiffs of cigarette smoke, intruding on his
+dreams, reminded Sir Mark of the unopened case in his hand.
+
+"I vote for coffee on the terrace, Mother," he said, turning his eyes
+from the glory without to the dimness of the unlighted dining-room.
+"Then we'll have the boats out.  There's going to be an afterglow and
+a half presently."
+
+"I told Grant about the coffee two minutes ago, dear," Lady Forsyth
+answered, smiling; but her eyes dwelt a little anxiously on the
+silhouetted view of her son's profile, as he set a match to his
+cigarette.  The straight, outstanding nose and square chin vividly
+recalled his dead father.  But the imaginative brow was of her
+bestowing and a splash of light on his hair showed the reddish
+chestnut tint of her own people: the tint she loved.
+
+"Come along, children," she added, including in that category four
+out of her five guests--two girls, unrelated to herself, Ralph
+Melrose, a Gurkha subaltern, and Maurice Lenox, an artist friend of
+Mark's.
+
+Keith Macnair, professor of philosophy--his rugged face lined with
+thought, his dark hair lightly frosted at the temples--was the only
+genuine grown-up of her small house-party.  A connection of her own,
+and devoted to both mother and son, he was so evenly placed between
+them in the matter of age that he could play elder brother to Mark or
+younger brother to Lady Forsyth as occasion required.  And, whenever
+professional claims permitted, occasion usually did require his
+presence, in some capacity, either at Wynchcombe Friars or Inveraig.
+Between times, he lived and lectured and wrote philosophical books in
+Edinburgh; and never, if he could help it, did he fail to spend most
+of his summer holiday at Inveraig.
+
+When the party rose from the table he joined Mark in the window; and
+as the two girls stood back to let Lady Forsyth pass out, she slipped
+an arm round each.  Her love of youth and young things seemed to
+deepen with her own advancing years.  But she had her preferences;
+and it was the arm round Sheila Melrose that tightened as they passed
+through the long drawing-room to the terrace, where coffee was set
+upon a low stone table in full view of the illumined lake and sky.
+
+"It's splendid to have you safe back again, child," she said,
+releasing Monica Videlle and drawing Sheila down to the seat beside
+her.  "India's monopolised you quite long enough.  There's some
+mysterious magnetism about that country.  People seem to catch it
+like a disease.  And I was getting alarmed lest you might succumb to
+the infection."
+
+Miss Melrose smiled thoughtfully at the sunset.  "I'm not sure _I_
+haven't succumbed already!" she said in her low, clear-cut voice.  "I
+have vague tempting dreams of going back with Ralph when his furlough
+is up; or with Mona, to help doctor her Indian women.  But probably
+they'll never materialise----"
+
+"More than probably, if I have any say in the matter!"
+
+Lady Forsyth spoke lightly, but under the lightness lurked a note of
+decision.  She had her own private dreams concerning this girl with
+the softly shining eyes under level brows, and the softly resolute
+lips that never seemed quite to leave off smiling even in repose.
+
+At mention of India, Miss Videlle's thoughtful face came suddenly to
+life.  "It would be lovely for me," she said.  "Too good to be true!"
+
+"Never mind, Miss Videlle," Maurice consoled her almost tenderly.
+"This ripping evening's not too good to be true.  And _I_ can put you
+up to some tips for squaring Lady Forsyth--in strict confidence of
+course!"
+
+He bent towards her with a slightly theatrical offer of his arm, and
+they moved off to a seat near the ivy-covered wall, looking towards
+the distant rapids.
+
+Lady Forsyth glanced after them with a passing twinge of concern.
+
+The girl--a fairly recent acquisition of Sheila's--was shy and
+clever, with a streak of dark blood in her veins.  She had done
+brilliantly at Oxford, and was now qualified to take up the medical
+work in India on which she had set her heart.  Sheila had acquired
+her while going through a course of massage and magnetic healing, for
+which she showed so distinct a gift that she had serious thoughts of
+taking it up in earnest.  A vague idea of going out with Monica
+Videlle had been simmering in her brain for the past week; but she
+had not spoken of it till to-night.
+
+"Wonder what's come to old Mark," mused Ralph pensively, stirring his
+coffee.  "Thought this picnic arrangement was all for his benefit----"
+
+"Rather so!" Mark's voice answered him, as he and Macnair strolled
+round the corner of the house.  "Hurry up with the coffee, Mums.  I
+love dabbling my oars in the sunset.  Lenox, old chap, you two might
+go on ahead and give the word."
+
+They went on readily enough; and the rest soon followed them through
+the wilder spaces of the garden, down rocky steps to the bay, where
+sand and rough grass shelved gently to the water's edge.  Here they
+found two boats already afloat, with Maurice and Monica--she was
+commonly called Mona--established in one of them.
+
+Lady Forsyth, nothing if not prompt, privately consigned Ralph to
+that boat, Mark and Keith to her own.  It was a heavenly evening, and
+she thanked goodness they were going to have it to themselves: quite
+a rare event since Maurice Lenox had discovered that superfluous Miss
+Alison.
+
+"Coming to row stroke for us?" she asked as Mark handed her in.
+
+He shook his head, smiling down at her.
+
+"That's to be Keith's privilege!  I'm for the other boat."  But
+neither his smile nor the light pressure of her arm could atone for
+the refusal.
+
+"Pointed and purposeless," she denounced it mentally; but within a
+very few moments his purpose was revealed.
+
+"Down Connel way first, Keith," he called out, as he pushed off his
+own boat and sprang lightly in.  "I want to run up to the village.
+Miss Alison and her friend might like to join us."
+
+So they rowed towards Connel at his command: and for Lady Forsyth the
+pleasure of the outing was gone; the peace and beauty of the evening
+spoilt by fierce resentment against these intrusive strangers who had
+no authorised position in the scheme of things.  And her natural
+vexation was intensified by concern for Sheila: though whether the
+girl took Mark's sudden and strange defection seriously it was
+impossible to tell.  She wore that smiling, friendly graciousness of
+hers like a bright veil, that seemed to baffle attempts at intimacy,
+while it enhanced her charm.  Even with Lady Forsyth, who loved her
+as a daughter, she had her reserves, notably on matters nearest her
+heart.
+
+"After all, she knows the real Mark almost as well as I do," Mark's
+mother reflected by way of consolation.  "And she's wiser than I am,
+in many ways, though she _is_ nearly thirty years younger.  I'm
+probably racing on miles too fast.  He's barely known the girl a
+fortnight.  He _couldn't_ be so crazy!--  All the same, he's no
+business to--it's distracting!" she concluded, her irritation flaming
+up again at sight of the two figures that were now approaching the
+shore, escorted by Mark.
+
+Miss Alison, the taller one, had unquestionably height and grace to
+recommend her.  Mark, who stood six feet in his socks, could barely
+give her a couple of inches; and the languid deliberation of her
+movements had, on Lady Forsyth, the same maddening effect as a drawl
+in speech.  Her own brain and body were too quick, in the original
+sense of the word, not to make her a trifle intolerant towards the
+"half-alive"; and, rightly, or wrongly, Miss Alison was apt to
+produce that impression even on her admirers, though no doubt they
+expressed it differently.
+
+Personal prejudice apart, Lady Forsyth preferred the girl's
+companion, Miss O'Neill, in spite of her wrong-headed zeal for the
+Suffrage and Home Rule.  Had Bel Alison been out in search of a foil,
+she could have discovered none better than this big-hearted,
+fanatical woman of five-and thirty, shortish, and squarely built,
+with an upward nose, an ugly, humorous mouth, and a quantity of rough
+brown hair in a chronic state of untidiness.  Lady Forsyth gathered
+that she was an active philanthropist, and that the incongruous pair
+shared a flat somewhere in Earl's Court.  To outward seeming they had
+certainly nothing beyond the same address in common.
+
+If Bel's movements were over-deliberate, Miss O'Neill's were apt to
+be sudden; and she strode into the boat with the decision of one
+given to putting her foot down to some purpose.
+
+"Steady on!  You evidently don't do things by halves!" Sir Mark
+remonstrated, laughing, and consigning her to a cushion in the bows.
+Bel had already usurped Maurice's seat astern, and Mark rowed
+stroke--this time without need of invitation.  Then they turned about
+and moved slowly up the loch, dabbling their oars in the sunset fires
+and shivering the purple shadows of the hills.
+
+And if for Helen Forsyth the pleasure of the evening was over, for
+Mark it had but just begun.  And she knew it.  Therein lay the sting.
+Though "the boy" was now very much a man, she could honestly have
+said, two weeks ago, that nothing beyond minor differences and mutual
+flashes of temper had marred the deep essential unity of their
+relation--a unity the more inestimably precious since he was now all
+she had left of her nearest and dearest on earth.  Husband, daughter
+and younger son had all passed on before her into the Silence, and of
+her own people one brother alone remained.  At the moment he was High
+Commissioner of New Zealand, and seemed disposed to stay on there
+indefinitely when his term of office expired.  The Empire, he wrote,
+was a saner, sweeter, more spacious place of abode than
+twentieth-century England, which seemed temporarily given over to the
+cheap-jack, the specialist, and the party politician.  And she--while
+loving every foot of her husband's country and her own--understood
+too well the frequent disappointment of those who came, on rare and
+hardly earned leave, from the ends of the earth and failed to find,
+in picture-palaces and music-halls, in the jargon of Futurists and
+demagogues, the England of their dreams.
+
+For this cause, her sole remaining brother had become little more
+than a memory and a monthly letter.  Yet, could she never account
+herself a lonely woman, while she had Keith for friend and mentor,
+Mark for son, and Sheila for--more than possible--daughter.  What
+business had this unknown girl to step into their charmed circle and
+unsettle the very foundation of things?  Never, till to-night, had it
+seemed possible to Mark's mother that she could arrive at dreading
+the fulfilment of his heart's desire.  Yet that was what it amounted
+to.  Dread lurked behind her surface irritation.  The touch of second
+sight in her composition made her vaguely conscious of danger in the
+air.  Small wonder if she anathematised Maurice Lenox for his knack
+of picking up promiscuous strangers, and, in this case, aggravating
+his offence by failing to appropriate his own discovery.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+"Quand on vous voit, on vous aime; quand on vous aime, où vous
+voit-on?"
+
+
+For a while the two boats kept in touch, so that talk passed easily
+between them.  Miss Alison spoke little.  Silence rather became the
+fair pensive quality of her charm--and probably she knew it.  The
+uncharitable supposition was Lady Forsyth's: and she was fain to
+confess that pensiveness and silence harmonised well with the fine,
+straight nose, the mass of dull gold hair, and eyes of that
+transparent blue which lacks warmth and depth, yet has a limpid
+beauty of its own, especially where the pupils are large and the
+lashes noticeably long.
+
+Mark, too, had fallen silent: the worst possible sign.  But Miss
+O'Neill atoned for all deficiencies by discoursing vigorously to
+Maurice's swaying shoulders, upon the latest developments of the
+suffrage campaign.  Maurice, equal to any emergency, had no
+difficulty in airing his own views on the subject--as it were,
+through the back of his head--to one who had hammered shop windows
+with her own hand, though she graciously drew the line at firing
+churches and wrecking trains.  Yet she was a woman of generous and,
+at times, noble impulses.  The greater part of her small annuity was
+lavished on a very personal form of rescue work--and on Bel.
+
+"It's rank injustice, say what you please," she declared in her
+strong vibrant tones, "to imprison and torture poor misguided girls
+who have the courage of the faith that's in them.  The real blame
+lies on the heads of those who've driven us to extremes."
+
+"That sounds very fine, Miss O'Neill, but I'm afraid it won't hold
+water," Macnair put in quietly from the other boat.  "It has been the
+standing excuse of fanatics and--dare I add?--criminals all down the
+ages.  Your latest forms of argument will simply harden and justify
+opposition to a cause that is not without certain elements of justice
+and right."
+
+His pleasant voice had the clear, leisured enunciation of the
+scholar, a quality peculiarly exasperating to the red-hot enthusiast
+whose thoughts are, in the main, emotions intellectually expressed.
+"Justice and right indeed!" Miss O'Neill fairly hurled the words at
+him.  "That's all we're asking, isn't it?  And precisely what we'll
+never be getting under a man-made Government and man-made laws."
+
+Macnair smiled and shrugged his shoulders.  He had no mind to let
+argument and recrimination desecrate the peace and glowing beauty of
+a Highland summer evening; and with practised ease he slid into the
+calmer waters of generalisation, as much in the hope of weaning Lady
+Forsyth from troubled thoughts as for the pleasure of expressing his
+own.
+
+"The truth is," he said, resting on his oars, while the boats drifted
+into a luminous bay, "every age, like every country, has its moral
+microbe; and the microbe of this one is 'Down with everything';
+'Can't; won't; shan't; don't; Pass it along the line,' that's about
+the tune of it, in all ranks.  Kipling may or may not be a classic
+poet, but his Commissariat Camels puts the present-day spirit into a
+nutshell.  For nearly a hundred years the world has been fed on a
+steady diet of revolt; and now we have the climax, distaste for
+duties and clamour for rights.  The fine, brave old wisdom of
+acceptance is altogether out of court----"
+
+Mark, withdrawing his gaze from Miss Alison's profile, treated him to
+a smile of amused approval.  "Why this sudden access of eloquence,
+old man?" he asked; and Keith deliberately winked over his shoulder.
+
+"Miss O'Neill there's to blame; and the modern world does seem rather
+egregiously modern when one's been living for months in a backwater
+with Pindar for company."
+
+"Oh, Keith, have you really found time for your promised translation
+of the Odes?"  Lady Porsyth--herself a translator of some
+distinction--leaned eagerly forward.
+
+"I've been making time for a few of them," he answered, pleased with
+the success of his diversion, "by neglecting my Bergson book."
+
+"Have you got them here?"
+
+"Yes.  They're in type, awaiting your consideration."
+
+"Well done.  You'll publish them, of course?"
+
+He shook his head.  "Not even to please you!  I've simply been
+enjoying myself, exploring a little deeper into the heart of an old
+friend; one who could look life in the face without feeling convinced
+that he personally could have made a better job of it.  One suspects
+even our poets, these days, of being propagandists in disguise.
+Pindar is as sublime and as useless as a snow-peak; and one can no
+more convey the essence of him in English than one could convey the
+scent of a rose in Parliamentary language!  Yet one is fool enough to
+try!"
+
+Sheila, who had been listening with her quiet intentness, remarked
+softly, "_Why_ don't we all learn Greek?"
+
+"Because the humanities are out of court in an age of scientific
+materialism.  Wasn't there a promise, once, that I should teach
+_you_?"
+
+The girl flushed with pleasure.  "I thought you'd forgotten."
+
+"And _I_ thought Miss Videlle had persuaded you to give up everything
+for this massage you're so keen about."
+
+Their talk took a more personal tone, and Lady Forsyth's attention
+strayed again towards the other boat.  It had drifted a little
+farther off, and a change of seats was in progress between Mark and
+Miss Videlle.  One moment his tall figure loomed against the dying
+splendour; the next, he sank cautiously down beside Miss Alison, who
+vouchsafed him a sidelong glance of welcome.
+
+"We're moving on a bit, Mother," he sang out, seeing her face turned
+in their direction.
+
+They moved on accordingly: and it did not occur to Lady Forsyth that
+Miss O'Neill, sitting alone in the bows, obscured from vision of the
+disturbing pair, was in much the same mood as herself.  Lonely,
+passionate, and emotional, her thwarted womanhood had found in Bel
+Alison an object on which she could lavish at once the protective
+tenderness of a mother and the devoted service of a man.  Unhappily,
+this last included a consuming jealousy of those who had a better
+natural right to the girl than herself.  Diligently and skilfully,
+therefore, she had scattered seeds of prejudice against the unjust
+half of creation--which, by the way, she very much appreciated in
+units, while denouncing it in the mass.  By way of a more positive
+deterrent, her slender means were taxed to the utmost that Bel might
+have cushions and flowers and curtains to suit her fastidious taste.
+No one, least of all Miss Alison, suspected the extent of her secret
+shifts and sacrifices.  And, intermittently she had her reward.  But
+no skill in self-deception could blind her to the fact that her
+lavish devotion was as dust in the balance against the passing
+attentions of a baronet, lord of two estates, and a fine-looking
+fellow to boot.  To-night the conviction rankled with peculiar
+keenness by reason of her suppressed irritation with Macnair.
+
+"Shirking the issue.  Just like a man!" she soliloquised wrathfully.
+"And dragging in his own trumpery translations by the heels.  The
+conceit of the creatures!  And the folly of them.  Wasting good
+abilities over the vapourings of a musty old Greek poet.  Blind as a
+bat, or simply not caring a snap that the world's crammed with evils
+crying out to be reformed.  Let them cry, so long as he can scribble
+in peace...."
+
+At this point her somewhat chaotic thoughts were interrupted by music
+from the other end of the boat.  Mark was singing Wallace's lullaby,
+_Son of Mine_; half crooning it, at first, for the benefit of Miss
+Alison, who did not know it.  But as the strong swing of the melody
+took hold of him, he let out his voice to the full--a true, clear
+baritone; music in its every cadence; and something more than music,
+for those who had ears to hear.
+
+Harry, raging inwardly, heard, and understood very well that the days
+of her own dominion were numbered.  Lady Forsyth understood equally
+well; but she had passed beyond the raging mood.  The song was an old
+favourite; every note of it laden with associations; and in spite of
+herself tears started to her eyes.
+
+As for Mark, others might understand or not as they pleased.  He was
+singing to an audience of one; to the girl who sat beside him, her
+uncovered head lifted and half turned away toward the dark sweeping
+curves of the hills.
+
+When the murmur of applause died down she turned to him with the slow
+lift of her lashes that, conscious or no, thrilled him afresh at each
+repetition.  "I didn't know you could sing like that," she said
+softly.
+
+"I can't always," he answered, flushing under her implied praise.
+"Sometimes--it just takes hold of me.  Don't you sing yourself?  I'm
+sure you've got music in you."
+
+She suppressed a small sigh.  "Oh yes.  It's one of my poor little
+half-fledged talents; useless for want of proper development.  My
+elder sister's the clever one, and she got all the chances.  She
+found me convenient sometimes for duets."
+
+"Duets?  Good.  I know plenty.  Let's have a try.  What was her line?"
+
+"Classical.  Mostly German."
+
+Mark was silent a moment raking his memory.  Then he had an
+inspiration.  "Mendelssohn's 'I would that the love'...?  Wasn't that
+the sort of thing?"
+
+"Yes.  Very much so."
+
+"Right!  We'll give them a treat.  You take the air."
+
+She shook her head.  "You're going much too fast.  I never said I'd
+sing; and--I've rather forgotten the words."
+
+"You won't slip out of it that way!" he told her; and leaning close
+he crooned under his breath: "I would that the love I bear thee, My
+lips in one word could say; That soft word----"
+
+"Oh yes, I remember now," she cut him short rather abruptly; but a
+faint colour showed in her cheeks and this time she did not lift her
+lashes.  "Very pretty, but drenched with sentiment.  That's the worst
+of German songs."
+
+"Well, you can't beat the music of 'em," he persisted, rebuffed a
+little by her tone, and hoping it was assumed for the benefit of Miss
+Videlle, who was most vexatiously in the way.  "I'm set on it anyhow.
+Are you ready?"
+
+Taking her smile for consent he moved one hand, beating time in the
+air; then, without preliminary, their united voices took up the song.
+Bel's, though sweet and true within its range, proved too slight an
+organ to stand the open-air test, and Mark had need to moderate his
+full-toned alto accordingly, thereby giving an added effect of
+tenderness to words and music already sufficiently expressive.
+
+And again Lady Forsyth--a most unwilling listener--understood
+everything far too well.  Deliberately she hardened herself against
+the appeal of the music.  For this time she was simply angry--angry
+as she had never yet been with her son; though, needless to say, she
+attributed his egregious behaviour entirely to Miss Alison.
+
+"How can he?  How dare he!" was the cry of her pained heart.  "So
+unlike him.  An insult to Sheila.  Flinging his folly in her face."
+
+But Sheila was drawing her finger-tips lightly through the water,
+watching the effect with that shadowy smile of hers, and to all
+appearances simply enjoying the song.  Almost Lady Forsyth found
+herself hoping that it was so.  In any case, she was thankful when
+the "exhibition" ended, and Maurice's cheerful voice was heard
+calling out: "Your turn, Miss Videlle!  Can't you give us a
+music-hall masterpiece by way of diversion?"
+
+But Miss Videlle disowned all knowledge of masterpieces, music-hall
+or otherwise, and Maurice himself came nobly to the rescue.
+
+"I'm not up to Mark's style; but I'm top-hole at genuine Harry
+Lauders," he volunteered with becoming modesty.  "And as you're all
+so pressing, it would be ungracious to hide my light under a bushel."
+
+"Good egg!" sang out Ralph from the second boat.  "Give us 'Roamin'
+in the Gloamin'.'"
+
+And Maurice, with a deliberate wink at Mark over Miss Videlle's
+shoulder, proceeded to give it for all he was worth, in the broadest
+of broad Scotch.  But Mark was in no mood to see the joke of a
+performance that sounded far too like a travesty of his own chosen
+love-song.
+
+"I kissed her-r twice and I asked her-r once if she would be my
+br-ride," sang Maurice with insolent gusto, burring his r's like a
+policeman's rattle; and Mark simply wanted to kick him into the loch.
+
+Lady Forsyth, on the other hand, was privately blessing the boy's
+foolery, that seemed to clear the air and sent the boats skimming
+homeward to the swing of chorus on chorus; only her son's voice being
+conspicuous by its absence.  Keith's boat was leading now; and
+without turning round deliberately she could see nothing of the two
+who haunted her mind.
+
+This was perhaps fortunate; for Mark's arm lay along the back of the
+seat, his shoulder was within three inches of Bel's; and under cover
+of the music they had picked up the dropped thread of their talk in
+lowered tones that imparted tender significance to the simplest
+remark.
+
+"I don't call your singing a half-fledged talent," he said with a
+faint stress on the pronoun.  "You've the gift, anyway.  Why not make
+more of it--study, practise?"
+
+She smiled and lifted her shoulders.  "I've tried, but I couldn't
+keep it up.  Laziness, perhaps; I don't know.  Vanity, perhaps, a
+little.  I either want to do things splendidly or else--I can't be
+bothered.  I need someone to spur me, to encourage me."
+
+"Well, I should have thought Miss O'Neill----"
+
+"Harry?  Oh yes, she'd lie down and let me walk over her if I wanted
+to.  But she's swamped in 'the Cause' and philanthropic work.  As for
+my talents, when I wanted the helping hand it wasn't there; and
+now--it's too late.  I've dabbled first in one thing and then in
+another, and frittered away what little ambition I ever had."
+
+The emotionless quiet of her tone suggested a noble resignation to
+the general obstructiveness of life; a resignation that, to the man's
+strenuous spirit, seemed alike pathetic and premature.
+
+"Why, you're only on the threshold of things," he rebuked her gently.
+"What are the talents you've dabbled in?  Do tell me."
+
+"Oh, I've written a little and acted a little.  I wanted badly to
+take that up in earnest.  Heavens!  Wasn't there a row!  So I fell
+back on the writing.  Verses, chiefly."
+
+"Have they appeared, any of them?"
+
+"A few.  Here and there.  I was vain enough once to have a booklet
+printed out of my allowance.  Then there was a worse row than ever."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"Well--they weren't exactly of the pretty-pretty order.  And my
+father's a clergyman: that kind of clergyman."
+
+"I see."
+
+He saw her, in fact, a creature of fine sensibilities, striving for
+self-expression, thwarted, discouraged, and misprized by those who
+should have been her natural helpers, and his heart went out to her
+the more.
+
+"May I--" he hesitated.  "Miss Alison, won't you let me see some of
+your verses?"
+
+"No.  Not for the world."  She flushed suddenly and her voice had a
+tremor in it.  It was the first time he had seen her really perturbed.
+
+"I'm sorry," he began; but she was mistress of herself in a moment
+and turned the matter off with a laugh.
+
+"We're both making mountains out of molehills!  The verses were
+wretched poor stuff, most of them.  Father was quite right to condemn
+them; but he went the wrong way about it.  He usually does.  They
+were just the outcome of--an influence; a passing phase.  I hated
+them myself--afterwards.  One does go through phases, doesn't one?
+At least I do.  It's rather interesting.  Saves one from the
+bottomless pit of boredom, the only thing we're really afraid of
+nowadays."  She made the statement in all seriousness.  "But--looking
+back--one sometimes wonders how much that other girl was really me?"
+
+He did not answer at once; partly because he was trying not to be
+aware that while she spoke there had blown through him a chill breeze
+of doubt: an unwelcome reminder that after all he knew nothing as yet
+of her life, her antecedents, or--if it came to that--of herself.  He
+only knew that almost from the first moment of contact she had put a
+spell upon him that he had neither the power nor the will to resist.
+
+"Do I seem to be talking utter nonsense?" she asked suddenly in a
+changed voice; and doubt fled like a wraith at sunrise.
+
+"Rather not.  I was only hoping--that this _is_ the real you.  I'm
+not simply a phase--am I?--like all the rest?"
+
+At that she turned to him with the lazy uplift of her lashes, and the
+astonishing blue of her eyes flashed on him like a light.
+
+"Isn't it--rather too soon to tell?"
+
+"_Is_ it?" he challenged her boldly, and exulted to see the blood
+rise in her cheeks.  More than that he could not achieve.  For
+another Lauder chorus had just died down and they were nearing the
+shore.
+
+"Look here," he said, low and rapidly.  "I am off up the loch
+to-morrow in my little steam yacht--fishing.  Come along too--will
+you?"
+
+She gave him a reproachful look.  "I can't.  You know I can't."
+
+"Oh, well, bring your police dog along if you must; and I'll get
+Lenox to make a square.  Will that do?"
+
+"Yes.  I'll ask Harry.  If it is like to-day--it'll be lovely."
+
+"Better than to-day, I hope," he muttered, wondering very much if he
+could wait till then, and cursing the wire entanglements of
+convention.
+
+"I'm going to see you home," he announced as he handed her out of the
+boat, and repeated his intention when all the party was ashore.
+"Good night, Mums," he added, laying a hand on his mother's shoulder.
+"Lenox is coming along with me.  Leave things open for us, will you?"
+
+"Very well, dear; don't be too late," she said, looking up at him;
+but between the gathering dusk and his own preoccupation he missed
+the mute appeal of her eyes.
+
+During the short walk back to the village, Miss O'Neill took complete
+command of affairs.  Having at last recovered her treasure, she
+slipped a retaining hand through Bel's arm, and never a chance had
+Mark of another intimate word.
+
+She graciously fell in with the morrow's plan, however; and
+afterwards, as the men strolled back, smoking, to Inveraig, Maurice
+was frankly informed what would be expected of him on the occasion.
+Mark betrayed his repressed excitability by speaking rather more
+rapidly and abruptly than usual.
+
+"I'm running this show altogether--you understand?  We're not going
+off on a blooming picnic to play consequences.  No nonsense, mind.
+And no Harry Lauder--confound you!  All you and Miss O'Neill are
+required to do is to make yourselves scarce.  Fact is, you're only
+there because I couldn't get--Miss Alison to come alone."
+
+Maurice smiled broadly.  "I gathered as much.  But I say, Forsyth,"
+he hesitated and took a pull at his pipe, "do you really mean
+business?"
+
+"Rather so.  What kind of a cad d'you take me for?" snapped Mark,
+whose temper was quick at the best of times.  "Think I'd play the
+fool with a girl like that?"
+
+"Sorry, old chap.  Didn't intend to rile you.  Only to a mere
+outsider, it seems just a trifle precipitate.  Besides--one naturally
+thought----"
+
+"Oh, dry up.  Nobody asked you to think."
+
+There was pain as well as anger in Mark's tone.  He knew very well
+what Maurice thought--what others were likely to think; and although
+Lady Forsyth did not guess it, his sensitiveness on Sheila's account
+almost equalled her own.  It hurt him horribly that by any act of his
+he should seem to cast even the slightest slur on her.  And he saw no
+reason.  For years they had been like brother and sister.  Certainly,
+since her return from India he had caught himself wondering--But
+before wonder could crystallise into belief, Bel had arisen in her
+moonlight beauty and all the stars of heaven had suffered eclipse.
+Come to think of it, he owed young Lenox a debt he could never repay;
+and for the rest of the way he made royal atonement for his flash of
+temper.
+
+"Good night, old chap," he said when they reached the house.  "I'm
+not turning in just yet."
+
+And for more than half an hour he paced the terrace, wondering,
+hoping, dreaming; while his mother lay awake in her bedroom above,
+both windows flung wide, listening to the restless sound of his
+footsteps; wondering also; and scarcely daring to hope that he had
+already spoken and been refused.
+
+Not until she heard him come in, at last, and shut the door of his
+room, did she let her tired body have its way and fall into a
+troubled sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+"You know not the limit of this kingdom, still you are its queen."
+RABINDRANATH TAGORE.
+
+
+Miss O'Neill, as might be supposed, proved no easy subject for
+diplomatic manipulation.  Long before they had made an end of their
+picnic-lunch, in a glen of rocks and birches and purple cushions of
+heather, she had effectually given Mr. Lenox to understand that she
+was neither to be deceived nor coerced by his tactful attempts to
+detach her from the other two.  Years of pushing and shouldering
+through obstacles in the Suffrage campaign, had so far blunted her
+finer sensibilities that she could smilingly hold her ground even
+among those who obviously wished her elsewhere: and she held it
+to-day, till Mark lost patience and frankly took the bull by the
+horns.
+
+"I say, Miss O'Neill, you might take pity on Lenox and honour him
+with your company up the glen," he said; and beneath his engaging
+tone there lurked a faint note of command.  "He's no fisherman, and
+he can't keep himself to himself for ten minutes on end.  So you see,
+it would be a real act of charity to remove him."
+
+"Yes, Sir Mark, I can see that without spectacles," answered the
+redoubtable Harry, challenging him with her greenish-brown eyes.
+
+"Good business!" Sir Mark retorted unabashed.  "When you reach the
+high moor you'll be rewarded by a view that's worth some climbing to
+see.  Of course, if Miss Alison would prefer to go with you----"
+
+"Miss Alison's far too comfortable where she is, thanks!" Bel
+interposed with her deliberate drawl.  She had settled herself on a
+low rock and sat dreamily watching the river, elbows on knees, chin
+cradled in her hands.  Without changing her attitude, she glanced up
+at Sir Mark and her smile seemed to link them in completest
+understanding.  "If the necessity for silence becomes too
+overpowering I can always go to sleep.  I'll be as good as gold,
+Harry dear--"  She shifted her gaze to Miss O'Neill's resolute,
+rebellious face.  "And I think Sir Mark can be trusted not to let me
+fall into the river!"
+
+The upward jerk of Harry's head implied wholesale distrust of the
+species; but finding herself cornered she surrendered at discretion.
+"Well, Mr. Lenox," she said, "since it's a case of obeying orders, we
+must make the best of each other.  This way, I suppose?"  She strode
+on before him up the narrow, stony path; and Maurice, with an
+abortive grin at Mark followed in her wake.
+
+Keeping well ahead of him, she toiled on indomitably till trees were
+dwarfed to bushes and the primeval splendour of the high moors came
+suddenly into view.  Before them, and upon either hand, the heather
+and the heavens were all.  It was as if they stood upon the shore of
+an amethystine sea, studded with islands of granite and juniper, and
+shadowed only by slow-moving continents of cloud.  For Maurice, with
+the blood of Eldred and Quita Lenox in his veins, such a vision was
+among the rare things that could smite him to silence.  He drew a
+great breath and stood very still, his young, expressive face
+glorified, passingly, by the artist's pure joy in colour, and the
+Scot's love of the land.
+
+Miss O'Neill, a townswoman by taste and habit, would have preferred a
+throng of human faces, any day, to the sublime emptiness around them.
+Hot, breathless, and in a ferment of anxiety, she sank gratefully on
+to the nearest rock and looked up at her companion; but the light on
+his face checked her ever-ready tongue.  She liked the boy.  He was
+more than "a mere he-thing," and that streak of the woman in him
+appealed strongly to the masculine strain in herself.  But protracted
+silence irked her; and very soon anxiety goaded her into speech.
+
+"Mr. Lenox, how long have you known Sir Mark Forsyth?  Are you
+acquaintances or friends?"
+
+Maurice considered that point without removing his eyes from the
+heather.  "Rather more than acquaintances, I should say, and on the
+way to becoming friends.  I've known him two years on and off.  But
+I've never yet been to Wynchcombe Friars, his Hampshire place.  He's
+crazy about it.  They say you never know the real Forsyth till you've
+seen him there.  I'm going there this autumn, to be converted from
+Futurism and Experimental Art in general!  At least that's his
+notion.  He's a splendid chap.  Chockful of ideas.  A bit
+reactionary, some of them.  He's dead against what we should call
+industrial progress, and what he calls sacrificing the man to the
+machine.  They've got a great scheme on, he and his mother and
+Macnair, for joining up all the scattered attempts at reviving
+handicrafts and guilds----"
+
+"Oh, bother their crafts and guilds!" Miss O'Neill broke in with
+scant ceremony.  "Sheer fads!  Result of riches and idleness.  _I_
+want to know is he the kind of man to take up a girl violently--you
+see how it's been--just to pass the time?"
+
+"No!"  Maurice rapped out the negative with unusual vehemence.  "As a
+matter of fact, I believe he intends to offer her his heart and his
+title and all his worldly goods before we get back to them."
+
+Miss O'Neill started visibly.  "What--on a fortnight's acquaintance?"
+
+"Yes.  A trifle steep, isn't it?  And, for a man in his position, a
+wife's a rather important item."
+
+"Something more than an amiable housekeeper--is that your meaning?"
+Miss O'Neill rounded on him, a flash of temper in her eyes.  "I
+thought better of you, Mr. Lenox.  But you're all alike in the grain.
+A man in Sir Mark's position must have a beautiful figurehead for his
+dinner-table: a graceful, accommodating doll, that he can hang with
+jewels and silks and satins.  But my Bel's no doll-woman, for all her
+soft manners and sweet temper.  No doubt he flatters himself that, in
+a fortnight, he's read her from cover to cover: and he'll be telling
+her, sure as fate, that he's the one man on earth to make her happy,
+and think he's paying her the compliment of her life into the
+bargain!"
+
+Good-natured Maurice began to feel that Forsyth had been a trifle
+inconsiderate saddling him with a virago whom he was quite at a loss
+how to appease.
+
+"Well--compliment or no, she's free to refuse him," he remarked
+soothingly; "and after all, it's the natural thing."
+
+Miss O'Neill pounced on the words almost before they were out.  "_Of
+course_ it's the natural thing for a man like Sir Mark--spoilt by his
+mother, one can see with half an eye--to snatch at a beautiful woman.
+And where does a girl's freedom come in when a man dazzles her brain
+with extravagant lover's talk?  Besides--he's rich.  She's poor.  It
+almost amounts to bribery.  I hate the whole thing.  I came away for
+her sake, to give her a chance of knowing him better, just in case--
+But if it's true, what you say, I shall go straight down again----"
+
+She sprang up from her rock and faced about; but Lenox, smilingly
+determined, stood astride across the narrow path.
+
+"Excuse me, Miss O'Neill, not if I can prevent it," he said.
+"Forsyth's going to have his chance fair and square.  Of course if
+you're game for a free fight--well, come on!"
+
+For a second she looked him up and down, a sudden flicker of humour
+in her eyes.  "I tackled a policeman once.  A bigger fellow than you.
+And he was very glad to get rid of me."
+
+"I can well believe it," Maurice answered with becoming gravity.
+"But look here, just consider, what earthly good would you do by
+deferring the inevitable--say, twenty-four hours--and probably
+annoying Miss Alison into the bargain?"
+
+The last shot told.  Harry let out her breath in a great sigh.
+"Life's a bewildering business," she mused aloud.  But common sense
+told her he spoke truth; and she liked him none the less for backing
+up his friend.  "Very well, Mr. Lenox, I give it up.  You evidently
+have instructions from headquarters, and I'll stay here till you give
+the word.  But scenery bores me stiff; so please make yourself as
+interesting as you know how."
+
+"Right you are," said Maurice; and indicating her deserted rock he
+flung himself on the heather at her feet in such a position that her
+prosaic figure in its knitted coat and rough skirt should not intrude
+upon his vision of the landscape.  Then he proceeded, in his fluent
+fashion, to enlarge on the subject uppermost in his mind--Sir Mark's
+queer conviction that a wide-spread revival of handicrafts and guilds
+would go far to solve the strike problem by restoring the creative
+sense in labour and renewing the broken link between art and life----
+
+For Sir Mark himself, at that moment, life held only one purpose, one
+achievement worthy of serious consideration--the linking of his own
+destiny with that of the girl who seemed capable of maintaining
+indefinitely her graceful pose of contemplation.  It was a pose that
+revealed to admirable advantage the long lines of her figure and the
+beauty of her small head with its close-fitting coils of hair.  Her
+discarded hat lay on the heather at her feet.  Close to her chosen
+rock sprang a young birch, its supple grace a reflection of her own;
+its drooping plumes, stirred by the breeze, dappling her blue dress
+with tiny restless shadows.
+
+Was it some day-dream that so held her, Mark wondered, or pure
+consideration for the trout that he had presumably come out to catch?
+Either way, her silence and abstraction had the effect of so
+intensifying his own emotion that speech seemed desecration.
+Besides--he had spoken already.  Could there really be any need to
+tell her again how swiftly and strangely she had swept him from his
+moorings, so that life held nothing, momentarily, but his glorified
+vision of herself?  Last night the sound of her voice, echoing his
+own confession, had silenced, for good, the whispers of prudence that
+strove to curb his impetuous spirit, counselling delay.  If only that
+confounded Miss O'Neill had given him a chance while the glamour was
+on them both, the whole thing might have seemed less egregiously
+precipitate.  Now that he had schemed for half an hour's privacy; now
+that she sat there, only a few yards away, seemingly unaware of his
+existence, a shiver of uncertainty chilled him.  A fortnight ago
+to-day, while he and Maurice were rambling in search of subjects, he
+had beheld her for the first time.  For him that fortnight was an
+indefinable age.  For her it might simply be fourteen days----
+
+But this sort of havering would never do.  He was a strong man, not
+unschooled in suffering, but little used to being thwarted in his
+desire.  And he did not seriously expect to be thwarted now.
+Deliberately he laid aside his fishing tackle, and leaning on one
+elbow looked up at the girl, whose rock was set a little higher along
+the sloping bank of the stream.  For a few seconds he took his fill
+of her, from the coronet of her hair to the seductive curves of her
+mouth and chin that made such tender atonement for the cool
+directness of her eyes.
+
+Still she did not move; but her lips parted in a small sigh, and the
+spell was broken.  Mark rose and planted himself before her.
+
+"Miss Alison," he began--and could get no further.
+
+"Well?" she asked with that distracting lift of her lashes.  "Is the
+precious tackle out of gear?"
+
+Her coolness almost angered him and gave him sudden command of his
+tongue.  "_Tackle_?  D'you really suppose I came out here to catch
+trout?"
+
+"You said so last night.  And you seemed to be making elaborate
+arrangements----"
+
+"So I was--to get half an hour alone with you," he announced bluntly,
+and saw the ghost of a blush creep up under her skin.  He wanted
+simply to take her in his arms without more ado.  Instead, he sat
+down close to the rock, plunged his hands in the heather, and leaned
+towards her.
+
+"I was trying to tell you last night.  Didn't you understand?"
+
+"N-no.  I thought the music--and the sentiment had rather carried you
+away."
+
+"It was _you_ who carried me away.  The music was a kind of
+safety-valve, that's all."  He leaned still nearer.  "Bel--is there a
+ghost of a chance for me?  Is it sheer conceit and impertinence on my
+part to ask--so soon?"
+
+"No--oh no."  And suddenly she covered her face as if the intensity
+of his gaze affected her like strong sunlight.
+
+He was silent a moment, watching her and crushing the heather in his
+strong fingers.  Then, very gently, he laid a hand on her knee.
+
+"What is it?  Tell me.  I must know."
+
+At that she dropped her hands.  By chance or design, one of them fell
+on his own and rested there.  The light contact sent electric thrills
+up his arm.
+
+"That's just it," she said with her slow smile.  "You must know.  But
+we neither of us do--yet.  It's been a wonderful fortnight.  And if I
+haven't travelled quite so fast or so far as you, that doesn't
+mean----"
+
+"Of course it doesn't.  I'm not such a conceited ass as to suppose
+you could fall in love with me at sight.  But now I've spoken--isn't
+there any response?"
+
+"Haven't you felt any?" she asked lightly, and the hand that rested
+on his moved in a just perceptible caress.
+
+"For God's sake don't play with me!" he broke out, half angry again.
+"I'm in deadly earnest."
+
+"I know.  That's just why one of us must try to keep a cool head."
+
+"Nonsense!  You're simply fencing.  And you haven't answered my
+question."
+
+"I'm trying to.  But I'm half afraid ... to let myself go.
+No--don't!"  She warded him off with a gesture, but deliberately
+replaced her hand over his.  "It's too sudden altogether.  Wouldn't
+it be wiser--for both of us--to wait a little?  You don't really know
+me one bit."
+
+He bowed his head and kissed the fingers that covered his own.  "I
+know I love you," he said simply, his deep voice low and controlled.
+"And if you can say the same, that's enough for me.  The rest will be
+an enchanted voyage of discovery."
+
+"Voyages of discovery are rather risky things," she reminded him.
+"And sometimes--they end in smoke.  You see, you're not just any one.
+I'm outside your world; and--your mother doesn't like me."
+
+"Nonsense," he said again, with less conviction than before.
+
+"It isn't.  I'm sure she wants you to marry Miss Melrose.  And I
+thought at first--you seem very intimate."
+
+"Naturally.  Our intimacy began when she was eight and I was twelve."
+He spoke looking out across the stream.  Something in him winced at
+her allusion to Sheila in that connection.  But it was only fair to
+her to explain things; and he forced himself to proceed.  "Her people
+are our nearest neighbours in Hampshire.  Her mother's the sort of
+person who subsists chiefly on fads and philanthropy--the kind of
+philanthropy that makes you abominate charity and all its works.
+When we lost...  Ailsa, my little sister, Mother sort of annexed
+Sheila, unofficially.  But that doesn't imply--that she expects me to
+do likewise.  We're devoted to her--both of us.  She's a splendid
+little person;" he turned now and spoke with greater naturalness and
+warmth.  "Not very easy to know.  But _real_, right through.  You're
+bound to love her.  There--are you satisfied?"  Without warning he
+slipped an arm round her.  "Will you give me my answer now?"
+
+He felt her yield under pressure of his hand: then, with a sudden
+enchanting simplicity, she lifted her face to his----
+
+Presently she sighed; pushed him from her a little and looked
+steadily into his eyes--blue, like her own, but a deeper, tenderer
+shade, shot through with fine radiations of orange.  Hers seemed
+still to hold a question.  His were purely exultant.
+
+"Darling, we've done it now," he said under his breath.
+
+"Yes.  I suppose--we have," she answered in the same key.
+
+"Suppose?  You're not going back on things, after _that_.  Next
+question is--when will you marry me?  Next week?"
+
+Her flush, that had died down, mounted again, clear carmine,
+beautiful to see.  "Oh, Mark!  Give me a few minutes to realise it
+all.  You're so impatient.  Such a boy.  You make me feel ... ages
+old----"
+
+"Look here, I can't have you talking that sort of rot," he protested;
+incorrigibly blunt, even in love.  "It's morbid sentimentalism.  You
+see, I'm the son of a mother who doesn't know how to feel old at
+fifty.  'Boy,' indeed!  You're a mere child yourself--the dearest in
+creation."
+
+"No--no.  I'm _not_ a child."  Her emphatic protest rang true.
+"Perhaps your mother has kept the bloom on life.  Mine has never had
+any bloom on it, worth mentioning.  I was reared in a groove; a very
+virtuous groove; and ... I didn't fit.  I wanted to feel and know and
+live; to be something more than a vegetable in a Wiltshire village.
+I knew I had talents of sorts; and I felt, if I could only get away
+and have a fair chance, I might achieve something worth doing, or, at
+least ... meet a man worth marrying."  She spoke looking away from
+him across the sun-splashed water.  "The only brother I cared about
+went off to the ends of the earth before he was twenty.  If I'd been
+old enough to go with him, I wouldn't be here now!"
+
+"Poor darling!"  He tightened his hold of her.  "Dreadful
+calamity--isn't it?--to be here now!  But didn't your mother
+understand you--help you?"
+
+"Poor little mother.  She did her best.  My unconventional streak
+comes from her side.  But she's a very tame edition; watered down by
+an early marriage with father, who's as conventional as a high-road,
+but unfortunately not as broad!  Privately, I think she was half
+proud of me and half terrified of what I might do next, like the hen
+in Hans Andersen.  It was father's pharisaical attitude towards my
+mild vagaries that made me worse, till at last I kicked clean over
+the traces, demanded a reasonable allowance (to my amazement, I got
+it), and went off to London, to take the world by storm."
+
+"To Miss O'Neill?" Mark queried, a faint anxiety in his tone.
+
+"Oh no.  Harry's a fairly recent phase.  I boarded with a friendly
+family in the second-rate theatrical line.  That was my chosen road
+to achievement.  But it didn't come off--worse luck!"
+
+"Nor the man worth marrying?"
+
+Her eyes lingered in his.  "Not to any great extent!  They were
+rather a mixed lot.  And everything seemed in league against me.  I
+made no headway anywhere.  Still--it was experience.  It was life.
+One was too busy, either hoping or despairing, to be dull.  Each new
+phase seemed to be the discovery of a new kingdom, till you
+found--you hadn't the key.  There was the writing phase, the acting
+phase, the American phase----"
+
+"America?  Why on earth----?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know.  The chance came.  And the notion attracted me.  A
+bigger, fresher world; experience----"
+
+"You seem mighty keen on experience," Mark struck in.  "D'you mean
+knowledge--or simply new sensations?"
+
+She hesitated.  "After all--new sensations are a form of knowledge.
+The most interesting on earth.  I'd go almost anywhere to discover
+the feel of things----"
+
+She stopped short, and Mark frowned into vacancy.  For the first time
+he caught himself wondering how old was she.
+
+"_I_ should say better be an ignoramus than a mere connoisseur in
+sensations," he remarked quietly.  "But perhaps I missed your
+meaning."
+
+"Perhaps there wasn't any meaning to miss!  I was talking--rather at
+random."  Then very lightly she leaned her head against his.
+"Mark--dearest, don't look like that."
+
+"Well, you mustn't talk like that," he said with decision.  "How long
+were you in America?"
+
+"Eighteen months.  Not very pleasant always.  But it did me no end of
+good.  I even went home for a time, full of fine resolves.  But the
+poor things soon shrivelled up in father's atmosphere.  Then--it was
+Harry to the rescue."
+
+"And now it's Mark!"  With sudden fervour he caught her to him.  "No
+more 'phases' after this, my Bel.  You shall have your freedom and
+your chance.  I'll make up to you, all I can, for the bad years.
+Mother will love you----"
+
+Bel shook her head.  "She doesn't like me."
+
+"Darling, she doesn't know you.  Mother may have her cranks and
+prejudices.  But if there's one woman on earth she can be trusted to
+love--it's my wife.  I'll take you to her to-night."
+
+"No--no.  To-morrow.  To-night--there's Harry.  It'll be a blow.  You
+see, when I first came to her, I was so sick with everything, I swore
+I'd never marry.  She's jealous already----"
+
+"Poor soul!" Mark said tenderly.  "But I'm jealous too.  I can't
+share you with Miss O'Neill.  If it comes to a tug, you'll have to
+choose between us."
+
+"I have chosen."  She spoke with genuine fervour; and leaning against
+him, she closed her eyes.  So seen, her face looked years younger and
+of a saint-like purity.  Doubts and qualms seemed sacrilege.  Without
+a word he kissed her lowered lids, and found, to his surprise, that
+her lashes were wet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+  "I am of an age with each; what
+  Matter if my hair turns grey?"
+                  --SIR RABINDRANATH TAGORE.
+
+
+That radiant day of summer, all too short for Mark, taxed to the
+utmost his mother's impatient spirit that could bear any ill better
+than the ache of suspense, sharpened by premonition of the worst.
+Mark's offhand manner of announcing the day's programme to the
+breakfast-table in general confirmed her own secret fear.  And if he
+were really crazy enough to speak, the result was a foregone
+conclusion.  She would be asked to love, as a daughter, this alien
+girl, of whom she knew nothing except that she was not the real mate
+of the real Mark.
+
+At the thought, a horrid sense of helplessness overwhelmed her.  Open
+opposition would be worse than futile: yet smiling acquiescence was
+beyond her.  Truth of intercourse--finest of all fine arts--was, for
+both mother and son, a necessity of their natures.  To it they owed
+that deeper intimacy not often attained between one generation and
+another; but, in the present dilemma, it would make things so much
+harder for them both that dread almost outweighed her longing for his
+return.
+
+Breakfast ended, Ralph announced his intention of carrying both girls
+off for a long walk.  Keith retired to the study with the _Scotsman_
+and a formidable pile of correspondence, leaving Helen to her own
+devices.  Nothing she liked better, in normal circumstances; for her
+devices were many and absorbing.  But to-day the silence and
+emptiness seemed to affect her like a ghostly presence, impalpable,
+yet vaguely threatening.  A chill sense of impending disaster swept
+through her.  She felt suddenly tired; oppressed by the dead weight
+of the years that she carried with such valiant elasticity of body
+and spirit and heart.
+
+Half a century of life had dulled but scarcely silvered her red-brown
+hair; had pencilled fine lines between her brows and at the corners
+of her too sensitive mouth.  But youth still triumphed in the eyes,
+in the slender alertness of her figure, in the swift impulsion of
+thought and speech.  Yet she lived and felt life--the whole world's
+life--too intensely not to suffer moments of sharp reaction; and this
+was one.  Hitherto, she had seen Mark's marriage as the chance of
+regaining a daughter.  Now she saw it, rather, as a risk of losing
+her son, and her heart cried out that this was more than she could
+bear.  In the past twelve years, she had suffered loss on loss, with
+a sort of fierce stoicism, the nearest approach to resignation that
+one of her nature could achieve.  Now, being a mere mother, she must
+stand aside and watch him drifting on to the rocks----
+
+It simply did not bear thinking of; and, gathering up her letters,
+she went in search of work, the unfailing anodyne for every ill.
+
+At that time, under Keith's critical supervision, she was translating
+Emile Faguet.  She was also studying Russian, with other translations
+in view; and she had correspondents in all parts of Europe, many of
+whom she had never seen.  But these activities were fringes merely on
+the main work of her life--the revival of arts and crafts and home
+industries among Mark's people and the linking up of all similar
+efforts throughout the United Kingdom.
+
+Yet, for all her activities and far-reaching aims, her true life had
+always been centred in her home.  And she was content that it should
+be so; content to let outsiders dub her "Victorian," for refusing to
+be swept into the maelstrom of modern restlessness; to let the
+"progressives" swirl past her--social reformers, seekers after new
+religions, new panaceas for every ill; content to find time for
+cultivating the art of friendship, not merely in her own class, but
+among Mark's tenants on both estates.
+
+Leisure to possess her own soul and the hearts of others was, for
+her, a simple necessity of life; and that very necessity, by limiting
+her sphere of action, was half the secret of her influence and charm.
+Ideals are uncomfortable things socially, but they have the merit of
+keeping their owners fresh; and the world's more strenuous workers
+found in her home atmosphere, a refreshment and inspiration worth
+some sacrifice of activity to preserve in an age of wholesale
+experiment in life and art and religion.  They might rate her for
+living in a backwater; but, as intimacy grew, they realised that she
+was more vitally in touch than themselves with the world's greater
+issues; that her uneventful days were rich in experience, informed by
+a central purpose and an unshaken faith in certain abiding
+truths--periodically obscured and neglected, yet as certain to return
+with power as sunshine after rain.
+
+"When religion decays and irreligion prevails, then I manifest
+Myself.  For the protection of good, for the destruction of evil, and
+for the firm establishment of national righteousness, I am born again
+and again."
+
+Krishna's ancient prophecy, printed in gold on an illuminated scroll,
+confronted her as she entered her sanctuary.  The scroll had been a
+birthday "surprise" from Mark; an achievement of schoolboy days when
+he was altogether her own; and the thought upset her equanimity
+afresh.
+
+Look where she would, the room was full of him: a friendly, intimate
+room, set in the bastioned tower that dated from feudal times.  But
+arrow-slits had long given place to unlimited light and air; and,
+like all rooms that are loved and genuinely lived in, it was quick
+with the personality of one who imparted something of herself to the
+very chair she used and the books and pictures on her walls.  These
+last were few and individual; but of the books there was no end.  A
+catholic assembly, they climbed the only bit of wall-space not
+occupied by the grate.  They stood about invitingly in revolving
+cases; and a privileged company was piled upon the floor near her
+chair.  Keith often accused her of having an untidy mind: and the
+state of her room betrayed her.  The one tidy spot was the
+writing-table, which she never used.
+
+Over the mantelpiece hung an early portrait of her husband, that
+might almost have been a portrait of Mark.  But Sir Richard's face
+was heavier than his son's; the brow more massive, the lower lip more
+prominent.  It was a shrewd, virile Anglo-Saxon face, unillumined by
+the Gaelic strain that Mark had from his mother.
+
+Yet, throughout, Sir Richard had respected his wife's ideals and
+enthusiasms, had smiled indulgently over her panacea for the
+democratic peril, and had allowed her a fairly free hand in the
+education of his sons.  So long as the heir of Wynchcombe Friars
+remained a staunch Imperialist, he might be as constructive as he
+pleased: and if there was the remotest truth in Helen's convictions,
+let Mark stand for Winchester and air his views in Parliament.  That
+had been Sir Richard's practical contribution to the subject.
+
+But the Baronet had now been dead ten years; and, so far, Mark had
+made no bid for Parliamentary fame.  Helen Forsyth had spent the
+first years of her widowhood travelling in Europe with Keith and
+Mark, who gave promise of developing into a sculptor of originality
+and power.  For his benefit as an artist they had lived mainly in
+Florence, Rome, and Greece, with a bias in favour of the first.  For
+in the great Florentine, young Mark had found his acknowledged master
+of his own thoughtful yet fiery spirit.  But, for his education as a
+man, Lady Forsyth had insisted on more than a nodding acquaintance
+with the rest of Europe; and finally Mark had spent two years leading
+voraciously at Oxford, largely with the art and labour problem in
+view.
+
+Since his coming of age, he had devoted himself heart and soul to
+sculpture and the management of his estates.  But the notion of
+Parliament still remained in abeyance.  The rise of the
+lawyer-politician and the commercial magnate had intensified his
+native distrust of democracy, while the increasing narrowness and
+bitterness of party spirit had effectually quenched his natural
+ambition to stand for the county of his birth.  One Forsyth uncle
+already represented the family.  In Mark's opinion that sufficed; and
+neither Keith nor his mother had quarrelled with his decision.
+
+It was as artist and responsible landowner that she longed to see him
+pre-eminent; and every year he had given clearer promise of
+fulfilling her hope.  At seven-and-twenty there remained only the
+last and most critical achievement--his marriage.  On this score
+alone he had caused her more than one flutter of anxiety; and now----!
+
+She clenched her teeth to keep back the futile curse; and, for the
+next hour or so, kept her attention chained to the intricate task of
+transposing idiomatic phrases and fine shades of meaning from one
+language into another.
+
+It was nearly twelve when the door opened and Sheila appeared,
+bringing the _Times_ and the midday post: Sheila, with a bright spot
+of colour in each cheek and a smile that radiated sweetness and
+light.  How on earth could Mark----?  But that bitter, useless
+question was taboo.
+
+Her own smile was more natural than it had been at breakfast; but
+Sheila did not fail to detect the lurking shadow in her eyes, or the
+significant fact that she did not eagerly tear open the paper and
+plunge into the latest letter from Belfast.
+
+"Mums, haven't you spent enough of this glorious morning grinding at
+Emile Faguet?" she said, kneeling down and laying a hand over the
+open page.  "You look tired--worried."
+
+"I _am_ worried," Lady Forsyth admitted with a direct look, and
+Sheila's colour ebbed a little.
+
+"Unhappy, are you--about Mark?" she asked very low.
+
+"Yes.  Haven't I reason to be?"
+
+"But, Mums--she seems a very sweet person.  And if he cares----"
+
+"My dear, you're as bad as the rest of them about that girl."
+
+Lady Forsyth was so rarely impatient with her that Sheila set her
+lips a moment before venturing further.  "Well, you know, she _is_
+extraordinarily attractive."
+
+"Is she?  I don't see it."
+
+"Isn't that, perhaps, because--you won't see it?"
+
+"Sheila!"
+
+"Dearest--I'm sorry.  But surely he must know her better than we do,
+because--he cares.  And you don't give her a chance if you shut your
+heart against her.  It's so unlike you.  And it will be very hard on
+Mark ... if she----"
+
+"Oh, child, be quiet!"  Championship from this quarter was
+intolerable; and setting her hands on the girl's shoulders she gave
+them a gentle shake.  "There's no call to waste any of your sweet
+pity on Mark.  If he speaks to-day--and I have a horrid feeling he
+will--_she's_ not likely to refuse him.  And that's all he cares
+about at the moment.  I'm not being unjust to him, dear.  I'm facing
+the truth; which is sometimes quite as difficult as facing cannon.
+But--well, I can't talk about it.  You talk, instead.  You haven't
+told me half enough about India.  I've an idea--something happened
+out there.  Am I right?"
+
+The girl nodded, looking out seaward.  "I've been wanting to tell you
+and yet rather shirking it.  This one--hurt me a good deal."
+
+"_Another_ 'poor thing'?"
+
+"Yes; badly poor.  What Mark would call a worm.  The third in two and
+a half years!  I begin to be ashamed of myself!  And--a little afraid
+too."  She paused. "Mums, because I'm not a wobbler myself, will it
+always be the wobbling men who insist on clinging to me?  Shall I
+perhaps be driven by this troublesome law of opposites to choose
+between marrying some pitifully lovable 'poor thing' or--never
+marrying at all?  Not lively alternatives--are they?"
+
+Lady Forsyth's hand slipped from the girl's shoulder to her waist.
+"Darling, I hope it won't come to that."
+
+"So do I.  Naturally I'd ... prefer to marry.  I--" she hesitated and
+coloured a little--"I would feel desolate ... without children.  Am I
+very ... premature?"
+
+Lady Forsyth drew her close and kissed her warm cheek.
+
+"You're very woman," she said.  "And Fate may have better things in
+store for you than the most importunate wobbler of them all.  I hope
+you discouraged this last one more decisively than his predecessor."
+
+Sheila shook her head.  "I simply couldn't.  They do tug badly at my
+heart-strings.  No denying it."
+
+"I suppose that means he's still hanging on?  And hurting you every
+time he gives a fresh tug?  A fine exhibition of masculine
+selfishness!"
+
+"Mums, he doesn't realise it hurts.  And--he has so much against him:
+if you only knew----"
+
+"Well, I _want_ to know."  Pushing aside her manuscript she drew a
+low stool close to her chair, and Sheila settled down on it, with a
+small sigh of content.  "Now tell me.  What has he against him?"
+
+"Loneliness and poor health; and an ugly little desert station at the
+end of nowhere; and hating the country--and--and drink!"
+
+"Darling!  You've outdone yourself this time!"
+
+Sheila turned quickly.  "_Please_ stop bothering about me, and be
+sorry for him.  You would be, if you'd seen him.  So worn and sallow;
+though he's barely thirty.  Clever--very.  Too many brains and too
+few convictions I used to tell him.  And then, there had been a
+girl--when he was home on his first leave.  She made violent friends
+with him: she drew him on till he lost his heart to her; only to find
+that she had deliberately used him as a stalking-horse for another
+man, who afterwards turned out to be married already.  He heard that
+she went off with him in spite of it, but _that_ he can't believe.  A
+dismal tale, isn't it?  The trouble was he couldn't stop loving her,
+even though he knew she was worthless----"
+
+"Until he found in my beautiful Sheila the privileged bit of
+sticking-plaster to mend his heart!"  Lady Forsyth interrupted her
+with a touch of heat.  "I wonder he had the face to tell you----"
+
+"He didn't tell me till I'd refused him--twice.  Then we had a long
+talk and he poured out all his bottled-up miseries.  And I wasn't
+_only_ a bit of sticking-plaster.  He'd stopped loving her long ago.
+Do be fair to him, dearest.  You're in a wicked mood to-day!"
+
+"I've never been in a worse.  And the tale of your latest 'poor
+thing' isn't exactly a specific for the blues!  How about the
+drinking?  And what was the final understanding, after refusals
+followed by confidences?"
+
+The hand that rested on her knee moved in a slow, soothing caress.
+"I'm afraid you won't approve.  Ralph didn't.  But I overruled him.
+He--Mr. Seldon--begged me so hard not to throw him over altogether
+that I said he might write once a month.  And the thing that arrives
+is more like an intimate diary than a letter.  He can write, Mums.
+And he isn't drinking--like he was.  That was part of the compact.
+It began in a bad cholera season: no one to notice; no one to care.
+He says the average man never realises, till he has to spend months
+alone, that what he calls the voice of his conscience is much more
+often the voice of other people's!  So now--I'm his 'other people'!
+He gave me his word and he writes quite honestly about it.  If ever
+he really slips back again he says he'll stop writing and chuck
+everything.--There!  That's my poor little tale; I'm happier now it's
+out.  You may scold me; but you'd have done just the same yourself!"
+
+For answer, Lady Forsyth put both arms round her and kissed her
+fervently.  "Be as angelic as you please to your poor things,
+darling," she said.  "But for heaven's sake don't marry them."
+
+"I couldn't," Sheila answered softly.  "I'd sooner--go without."
+
+In the silence that followed Lady Forsyth felt as if the girl must
+hear her vehement thoughts.  But very soon Sheila spoke again.
+
+"I told Mr. Seldon about our little colony of arts and crafts, and he
+is ever so interested.  He says machinery's gaining ground fearfully
+fast in India; cheapening and speeding up everything and killing the
+craftsman's joy in his work, just as it's done over here.  I had a
+letter yesterday.  He enclosed some Indian designs for carving.  I
+_must_ show you."
+
+She ran off to fetch them; and thenceforward "shop" banished every
+subject from the field.  They were still at it when the gong sounded
+for lunch, and half the interminable day was gone.
+
+Lunch would be rather an effort.  Helen's eager interest in the
+panorama of life made it a matter of course that she should lead the
+talk at table, and she was in no mood for it to-day.
+
+To her relief, she found herself spared the trouble.  Keith, who had
+an uncanny knack of divining her needs, came in armed with a book
+that had arrived by the second post and made havoc of his morning's
+work.  His feigned inability to part with it was obviously an excuse
+to make it the main topic of the meal.
+
+"Calls itself an Essay on the _Confusion of the Arts_," he said,
+placing a spare knife between the leaves.  "I ordered it for Mark on
+Stoddard's recommendation.  But I'm inclined to think it really
+belongs to you.  The writer upholds so many of your pet
+convictions.--Listen here."  The knife was removed.  "'Of course the
+present movement may continue indefinitely; we may have ideas of
+education still more undisciplinary; a still more pathological
+outpouring of fiction;...  In short, the dehumanizing of life and
+literature may go on for ever.  But we should not count upon it.
+Reactions have been known to occur, and they have occasionally been
+sudden.  The world may even now be threatened with a subliminal
+uprush of common sense, however disconcerting the prospect may be to
+Mr. Bernard Shaw and his followers.  But prophecy is vain.
+Everything depends on leadership; and one can never tell whether the
+right persons will take the trouble to be born!'"
+
+"One only knows they are notoriously lazy in that respect!"  Lady
+Forsyth struck in with a chuckle of appreciation.  "I like your new
+friend.  Any more gems of that quality?"
+
+"Several.  Ah--here we are.  Don't you seem to recognise your own
+voice?  'Any one who makes a stand for vital and humane concentration
+is set down as a mere laggard or reactionary, whereas he may find
+himself, rather, a pioneer and leader of a forlorn hope--not all
+forlorn....  The revival of broad, vigorous, masculine distinctions
+between art and art alone can save us from the confusions that have
+crept into modern life and literature, and which I trace to two main
+sources--emotional unrestraint and pseudo-science....  To set colour
+above design, illusion above informing purpose, suggestion above
+symmetry, is to set the feminine virtues above the masculine--and
+that has been the chief cause of the corruption of art and literature
+in the past century.'"
+
+An indictment so sweeping roused Mona, fresh from her Oxford
+triumphs.  "But, Mr. Macnair, I call that heresy!" she protested; and
+Keith smiled indulgently at her unusual warmth.
+
+"Heresy, my dear young lady, is, after all, only the truth as seen by
+the fellow in the opposite camp.  And there still remain certain
+unregenerates in the other camp who are praying for the rediscovery
+of Man."
+
+"Or a German invasion!" murmured Lady Forsyth.  "With apologies to
+Mona, I'm afraid nothing milder will save us from the petticoat
+peril!"
+
+At that Ralph looked up from his mayonnaise.  In a wilderness of
+abstractions, here was something he could understand.
+
+"I say, Lady Forsyth!  Rather a costly form of salvation, don't you
+think?"
+
+"Salvation is always costly, Ralph," she answered him gravely.  "And
+it is always worth the price paid."
+
+Here Mona struck in again; and the argument, as Keith had intended,
+carried them well through lunch.
+
+The meal over they adjourned to the shade of three ancient pines on
+the terrace; but very soon Ralph, who was frankly bored, persuaded
+Mona to come out on the loch, and Keith's contentment was complete.
+
+The new book lasted them till tea-time.  Then as none of the
+wanderers reappeared, he was persuaded to fetch his translations and
+read them to the audience of two for whom they had probably been
+written, if the truth were known.  It was sometimes said of Macnair
+that men delighted in his lectures almost as much for the quality of
+his voice as for the lucidity of his thought: and to-day, when
+instrument and music were in perfect accord, the effect on Helen's
+troubled, sensitive spirit was all that he could have desired.  She
+possessed in full measure the artist's gift of surrender to a mood.
+Sheer beauty of thought and language, serene and splendid harmonies,
+drawn from the discords of life, stirred her like organ music; and
+for Keith her abstracted silence was the quintessence of praise.
+
+Suddenly, round a bend of the loch, a white sail dipped into
+view:--and the spell was broken.  Keith who had seen it also, still
+read on; but he no longer had the ear of her spirit.  She was simply
+listening for the sound of Mark's footstep--and another.
+
+To her relief, the scrunch of gravel, when it came, plainly bespoke
+masculine boots.  Then the two men appeared round the corner of the
+house, and Mark waved his stick.  Bobs, who had been left at home,
+flung himself headlong on his recovered master with little sobbing
+squeals of joy, and, for one wild moment, hope revived in Helen's
+heart.
+
+"Well, you three look jolly comfortable there," Mark greeted them, as
+he came up; and it was Keith who answered him.  His mother seemed to
+be looking for her scissors.  One glance at his face had sufficed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+"Of love it may be said, the more unearthly, the more
+invisible."--HARDY.
+
+
+The first moment that escape was decently possible, Lady Forsyth left
+the group under the pines and went straight to her bedroom.  Mark
+would follow her, of course, but she had desperate need of a few
+minutes' breathing space.  She knew now that what Keith called "the
+brave old wisdom of acceptance" was still far from her; that she had
+not really faced the truth till she saw it in Mark's eyes.  And while
+her pulses still throbbed unevenly his voice sounded at the door.
+
+"Mother, can I come in?" he asked; and the next moment stood before
+her--a glowing embodiment of victory.
+
+"Congratulate me, Mums," he said.  "I've brought off the great event
+with honours.  Miss Alison--Bel has promised to be my wife."
+
+"I know.  I have known it--all day," she answered him, with a brave
+attempt at a smile.
+
+"More than I have!  Hadn't the cheek to count on her.  It was rather
+sharp work, and I'm not what you might call a fascinating chap.  But
+I simply couldn't wait.  It's the most amazing luck----"
+
+He broke off as if he had come into actual collision with her
+thought.  For nearly half a minute she endured the challenging
+scrutiny of his gaze.  Then: "Mother, what's up?" he asked, in a
+changed voice.  "Aren't you going to congratulate me?"
+
+She drew in a steadying breath.  He had given her a cue that made
+plain speaking a shade less difficult.
+
+"My darling boy," she said quietly, "I've never played at pretences
+with you and I can't do it now.  You admit this has been sharp work.
+And, honestly, I wish you had waited.  I should have thought better
+of your judgment and the quality of--your love."
+
+He frowned sharply.  "Oh Lord, I didn't come here for a preachment.
+The last thing one would expect from you.  I suppose it means you've
+taken one of your prejudices against her."
+
+"Dear, I don't _know_ her yet.  No more do you."
+
+"Well, anyway, I love her.  Strikes me that's the straightest road to
+knowledge.  And as she loves me----"
+
+"Did she tell you so, Mark--quite unmistakably?"
+
+"Well, of course," he retorted with rising temper; and was suddenly
+confronted by the realisation that Bel had done nothing of the kind.
+The discovery made him angrier than ever; but there was no
+untruthfulness in him.  "I don't know about unmistakably.  You don't
+expect a girl to make passionate declarations.  Isn't the fact of her
+accepting me proof enough for any one?"
+
+"_Is_ it?"  Lady Forsyth had herself in hand now, and she could not
+forego her one chance of candour even while she perceived the
+futility of reasoning with a man in his exalted state.  "Don't you
+realise that, in your case, there are ... other factors?  Your
+position, your title..."
+
+"My--?  Great Scott!"  He stood speechless.  The thing had simply not
+occurred to him.  Title and position were, for him, as much a matter
+of course as the hair on his head.  Then, as surprise subsided, anger
+flared up again.  "Upon my soul, Mother, I don't know what's come to
+you.  One would hardly think it was from you I'd learnt to credit
+people with the best motives.  Are you trying to insinuate that she
+may have fooled me?  Accepted all my worldly goods under a pretence
+of caring----?"
+
+"No: not pretence," she interrupted, with a flash of impatience.
+"How can I make myself clear to you if you won't let me finish a
+sentence?  I meant that your sudden infatuation--I can call it
+nothing else--might very well turn any girl's head and tempt her to
+imagine herself in love with you when she is really in love with the
+whole thing--flattered--attracted----"
+
+"Mother, be quiet!  I _will_ not hear you!"  There was pain as well
+as anger in the cry.  "You don't understand her.  You won't try to
+understand her.  You're simply jealous--prejudiced.  And I was
+counting on you--oh, confound it all----"
+
+He swung round on his heel and strode away from her that she might
+not see how deeply he was wounded by the failure of one who had never
+failed him yet.
+
+And she, feeling suddenly exhausted, sank down on the sofa near which
+she had been standing; her lips compressed, her face strained and
+hard.
+
+The silence lasted little more than a minute; but to both it seemed
+interminable.  Their deep and real devotion had never been less
+apparent than now; yet, even in that antagonistic pause, each knew it
+unshaken, unshakable, by anything that either might say or do.  Hence
+its infinite capacity for inflicting pain.
+
+Mark remained standing by the window; and Lady Forsyth's answer, when
+it came, was addressed to the unpromising outline of his back and
+shoulders.
+
+"If you won't hear me, Mark, there is no more to be said.  It has
+been difficult enough to speak at all at such a moment----"
+
+"Then I wish to God you'd held your tongue," he flashed round upon
+her.  "You haven't succeeded in shaking my faith--in her.  You've
+only taken the shine out of the happiest day of my life.  If that's
+any consolation to you!"
+
+Without giving her time to answer he swung out of the room; and the
+trivial fact that he refrained from slamming the door seemed cruelly
+to emphasise that his words had not been spoken in temper, but wrung
+from him by the bitterness of disappointment and hurt pride.
+
+For a time she remained as he had left her, sitting very still and
+upright, looking into vacancy.  Then she covered her face and bowed
+her head upon the carved end of the sofa.  But no tears came.  She
+would not suffer them.  She was still too angry with Fate, with Mark,
+and, above all, with the girl who had so transformed him.  And tears,
+after forty, hurt too poignantly to bring relief.  She was suffering,
+merely, and realising the power of those words, spoken by them both
+in the heat of the spirit, to disfigure the finer fabric of their
+lives.  Between two natures equally frank and fiery, lightning
+flashes of temper were inevitable; but never before had they revealed
+such threatening depths of division.  Worst of all, that division
+could not be hidden from others.  The fact and the reason would be
+obvious to them all: a thought intolerable to her sensitive pride
+that shrank from scrutiny even of sympathetic eyes.
+
+And to-morrow--and to-morrow----?
+
+The ghost of a shiver ran through her.  Life with an estranged Mark
+and an unloved daughter-in-law was the last impossibility.  She was a
+fool to have spoken while the ardour and thrill of possession were so
+fresh upon him.  Yet, had she kept silence, he would eventually have
+forced the truth from her.  It was the price of her proudest
+achievement; but it cannot be said that she paid it willingly----
+
+At this point her thoughts were checked by the sound of his footstep.
+She might have known he would come.  Instantly she was on her feet:
+her heart too full of relief for any thought of what she should say.
+
+Outside the door he paused--and she held her breath.  Then, very
+gently, he turned the handle and came in.
+
+The temper had gone out of his face but not the pain.  He came
+straight up to her and set both hands on her shoulders.  "Mother, I'm
+sorry," he said simply.  "I was a brute.  But one doesn't expect
+unfairness from you."
+
+"Darling, it was clumsy of me--I didn't mean to be unfair," she
+answered, grasping his wrists.  "But it's always been the truth
+between us.  I couldn't insult you with empty insincerities."
+
+"And it didn't strike you that you were insulting _her_?"
+
+His fervent stress on the pronoun was indiscreet, to say the least of
+it, and Lady Forsyth winced visibly.
+
+"Mums, don't be a fool," he said, with gruff tenderness, gently
+pressing her down on to the sofa.  "If you're going to start with
+being jealous----"
+
+"It's not jealousy, Mark."
+
+"Then what the deuce is it?"
+
+One thought sprang to both their minds, but neither could or would
+speak it.
+
+"We've got to know where we stand about this business," Mark went on.
+"If you're going to dislike and distrust her, the position's
+impossible.  The trouble is, she suspects something of the sort.  But
+of course I told her it was all rot.  Mother, you simply must be good
+to her.  She seems to have had a pretty rank time of it with her own
+people."
+
+"In what way?"
+
+"D'you really care to hear?"
+
+"Of course I do, seeing how vitally her past concerns your future."
+
+Mark grimaced indulgently.  "Can't you drop me and take a little
+decent interest in her?"
+
+"I'll try--if you'll give me a chance!  What about her people, and
+this Miss O'Neill?  I've often wondered----"
+
+He told her, in clipped phrases, pacing to and fro, as his habit was
+when moved or trying to express his thoughts.  He seldom sat down
+except to eat or read; and always seemed most completely himself when
+squarely planted on his feet.
+
+His version of Bel's very mixed experiences--glorified
+inevitably--failed to dispel his mother's instinctive sense of
+something lacking in the girl, precisely what, it was too soon to
+tell.
+
+"Poor child!" she said, when he had finished.  "I wonder--how old is
+she?"
+
+Mark frowned.  "I haven't the remotest.  We didn't exchange birth
+certificates.  About five-and-twenty----"
+
+"More than that."
+
+"Well, if she was forty it would make no earthly difference," he
+retorted.  "The point is--will you be decent to her, if it's only for
+my sake?  She doesn't seem ever to have had a home worth mentioning.
+I want her to feel she has a real one here."
+
+She sighed and rose to her feet.  "Darling, I'll do my best."  A deep
+metallic sound vibrated through the house--"Good gracious!  There's
+dinner and I haven't changed."
+
+"Who cares?  You look awfully sweet in that blue thing.  Come along."
+
+He slipped a hand through her arm and led her out on to the landing.
+But at the head of the stairs he paused.  A vision of Sheila skimming
+down the lower flight reminded him sharply that there were others to
+be told.  There were also congratulations to be endured.
+
+"I say, Mums, you might go ahead and break the ice," he said, giving
+her a gentle forward push.  "I feel most beastly shy of them all."
+
+Shyness was the least part of her own acute discomfort; but the
+obedience of a wife is as nothing to that of a well-trained mother.
+So she went before to do his bidding; and, being a mother, she would
+not have had it otherwise.  Indeed the boyish request, following upon
+his casual compliment, seemed to bring her nearer to him than she had
+felt for days.
+
+But in spite of her good services, Mark found dinner, flavoured with
+discreet congratulations, a singularly unappetising meal.  His
+mother's doubtful attitude worried him more than he cared to confess.
+Amongst the others also, he felt--or imagined--a lack of genuine
+sympathy in the air; and the obvious word "congratulation" was
+conspicuous by its absence.  Pure accident, no doubt; but it jarred.
+Of a sudden he felt vaguely "out of it," and more than a little
+aggrieved that his happiness--which should have added the perfecting
+touch to their summer party--seemed instead to have put things
+indefinably out of gear.
+
+Matters were not much better in the drawing-room after dinner--the
+friendliest hour of the day at Inveraig.  Keith took up a book.  Lady
+Forsyth obliterated herself behind the _Times_; and Sheila, soon
+after the men came in, slipped quietly out of the room.  Ralph,
+kicking his heels on the window-seat, proposed Bridge.  Mark refused
+without ceremony; and Maurice proceeded to monopolise Miss Videlle,
+by way of reward for duty done.
+
+Mark, in his highly strung mood, felt unjustifiably annoyed with them
+all, and the more he suspected their lack of sympathy the more his
+chivalrous nature swerved towards Bel.  He gave it up at last and
+decided to go to The Rowans.  There at least he would be welcome and
+could talk naturally.
+
+"I'm going for a stroll, Mother," he announced to the vast expanse of
+the _Times_.  "Leave something unlocked if I'm late."
+
+He wondered--would Keith offer to accompany him?  But Keith made no
+move.
+
+In the hall his happy impulse was checked by the recollection of
+Harry--probably antagonistic and quite certain to speak her mind
+without reserve.  His unexpected appearance might only make things
+difficult for Bel.  He felt checked at every turn.
+
+"Oh damn it all!" he muttered aloud, and in the same breath caught
+sight of Sheila coming slowly downstairs.
+
+The light falling on her from above burnished the outward sweeping
+waves of her dark hair, made shadowed mysteries of her eyes, and
+luminously caressed the curves of her face, that, like her voice, was
+at once clear-cut and soft.  Her high-waisted, silver-grey gown added
+a cubit to her stature; and Mark, watching her unperceived, was
+smitten afresh by her natural wild-flower grace, the very antithesis
+of Bel's more exotic charm.  Seen thus, Sheila looked no less than
+beautiful; but Mark's mind, just then, was concentrated on Bel.  If
+only he could enlist Sheila's championship, the girl would have twice
+the chance with his mother.
+
+Straightway he resolved on a direct appeal, and going quickly
+forward, planted himself on the mat, one hand grasping the balustrade.
+
+She started and came to a standstill two steps above him, so that
+their eyes were almost level.
+
+"What is it?  Mums wanting me?" she asked, and he thought she looked
+paler than usual, but perhaps it was only the light.
+
+"No.  _I_ am though," he said, with his usual directness.  "Are you
+frightfully busy?  Or frightfully bored with me and my engagement?"
+
+"Neither," she answered, a smile flickering in her eyes.  "Why?"
+
+"Well, the rest seem to be.  And mother was quite upset.  I had no
+end of a scene with her."
+
+"Poor darling!" Sheila murmured distressfully, and Mark made a
+whimsical grimace.
+
+"Which?  Her or me?"
+
+Her pallor vanished.  "Mums, of course.  Still, I'm sorry all round.
+It'll spoil things for you both."
+
+"Rather!  But I'm thinking you could do a deal to smooth matters,
+Sheila--if you choose.  It's Bel, I'm bothered about.  I want you all
+to make her feel welcome.  And things don't look promising so far.
+Come out for a stroll, will you!  I've a lot to say."
+
+"I'd love to."
+
+He stood back to make way for her, and as she reached his side his
+hand closed lightly on her arm.  "Sure you'll be warm enough in
+this?" he said.
+
+She nodded and went rather quickly on before him into the garden.
+
+Avoiding the terrace, they turned into a coppice of birch and pine,
+and so passed out on to an open stretch of heather, duskily purple
+and bronze in the fading light.
+
+Mark did most of the talking, and--in the repetition of her story to
+more sympathetic ears--Bel shone out with fresh lustre as the heroine
+of a plucky, if somewhat erratic, fight against the tyranny of
+circumstance and unfavourable early surroundings.
+
+Sheila listened to it all in her quietly intent fashion that was balm
+to the excitable natures of both mother and son.  She had the true
+gift for listening, which is even rarer than the gift of speech; and
+for Mark her silence had a quality of its own.  It was a living
+thing, alert and aware.  When a man felt worried it seemed to distil
+a sympathy that called for no embarrassing response.  And her brief
+contributions to their talk were more than satisfactory.
+
+Of course she would love his Bel as a sister, and "Mums" would be
+sure to come round in time.  To doubt it were a poor compliment to
+Bel, she reminded him; and he wondered how he had overlooked that
+obvious truth.
+
+Only once she spoke of herself.  "You know, I'm afraid," she said,
+"however well things turn out, Mums will never quite be able to put
+her in my place.  And I'm also afraid...," she hesitated and looked
+up at him, "that I wouldn't have it otherwise."
+
+"No more would I," he agreed, with sudden fervour.  "You belong--to
+us both.  And you always will."
+
+When, at length, darkness and falling dew drove them in, she had
+charmed him completely from his mood of vague doubt and irritation.
+But for the new name on his lips, and the stir of excitement in his
+veins, it was almost as if they were the Mark and Sheila of a month
+ago: almost--but not quite.
+
+In the hall he held out his hand.  "I'd rather not go in there again.
+Tell them I haven't gone out, will you?"  He paused.  "I'm a rotten
+hand at saying things, Sheila.  But, somehow, you've made everything
+look different.  And you'll square mother all right.  I can trust
+you."
+
+He grasped her hand harder than he realised; but she bore it without
+wincing.
+
+"Yes, Mark," she said, "you can trust me.  I'll do my very best."
+
+And none knew better than he the measure of her very best.  He ran
+upstairs with a lighter heart.  One could rely on Sheila, though the
+heavens fell; and his doubts--as she had said--were an injustice to
+Bel, who would probably twist them all--including his mother--round
+her little finger, once she set herself to the task.  His last
+thought was of their meeting on the morrow.  But it was Sheila's
+face, softly radiant in the lamplight, that perversely haunted his
+dreams.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+  "Where beauty's veil doth cover every blot,
+  And all things turn to fair that eyes can see!...
+  Both grace and faults are loved of more and less:
+  Thou makest faults graces that to thee resort."
+                                            SHAKESPEARE.
+
+
+Mark stepped back from his modelling pedestal and critically surveyed
+the result of his morning's work--a terra-cotta study of
+Contemplation, inspired by his vision of Bel under the birch-tree on
+that day of very mixed memories which seemed infinitely more than two
+weeks ago.
+
+The small statue, classic in its serenity and simplicity of
+treatment, was a perfect thing of its kind; as unlike the bulk of
+Mark's rugged, individual studies as Bel's whole attitude to life was
+unlike his own.  Every line of it rested the eye, even as the girl's
+cool deliberate nature rested his own ceaselessly questing brain.
+
+So far he had found no trace in her of the hidden conflict between
+spirit and matter that was the keynote of his art.  Already he
+recognised her spasmodic rebellions rather as a series of skilful
+evasions that implied no deep questioning of life or desire of
+knowledge.  She was not a genuine rebel, like Miss O'Neill.  Almost
+he suspected her of being an impressionist in life.  But doubts and
+discoveries notwithstanding, the charm still held, and would probably
+continue to hold--irrespective of anything that she might be or do.
+Incidentally, she was proving herself an admirable model.  This was
+the third morning he had victimised her, and she was still enduring
+it with the patience of a Griselda; still sitting, as she had sat for
+a good hour, on a long low stool at the far end of the room, in a
+blue wrapper with falling sleeves that revealed her arms.  Elbows on
+knees, chin cradled in her hand--was she thinking, dreaming, or
+mildly bored?  He would have asked her had they been alone.  But
+Lenox was ensconced in the deep window-seat behind him, working at a
+post-impressionist pastel--a challenge to Mark's insistence on the
+classic note.
+
+"Tired--are you?" he asked instead; and she gave him a sidelong
+glance with the slow lift of her lashes that still stirred him,
+though he knew it now for a conscious trick of manner.  "Could you
+hang on for another fifteen minutes without a serious collapse?"
+
+"I could--just; if I may have a cigarette directly it's over."  Mark,
+as well she knew, held ridiculously old-fashioned opinions on that
+subject, and a cigarette just before lunch was the depth of
+demoralisation.
+
+"I call that taking a mean advantage," he reproved her without
+severity.  "But I admit you've earned it."
+
+"A very sustaining admission!  And the prospect of getting it is more
+sustaining still."
+
+Her cool, provocative smile made him confound Lenox for being
+present, which was precisely what she intended.  Then, with a sigh of
+resignation she, so to speak, absented herself, and her gaze reverted
+to a large and vigorous bas-relief that occupied the centre of a deep
+wall-shelf right before her.
+
+It was a recent achievement; a thing of signal beauty and power, as
+magnificently impetuous as the figure on the table was gracious and
+controlled.  It portrayed the death of a Viking self-immolated on the
+deck of his blazing barque in a storm off the coast of Norway.  In
+the background, the savage peaks of the mainland were roughly
+indicated.  The rest was a whirl of wind-battered clouds and waters,
+scrolls of smoke and twisted blades of fire that wreathed and
+devoured the doomed ship.  Her prow, a Valkyrie with winged helmet
+and lifted spear, rode high on the crest of a wave, poised, as it
+were, for the flight to Valhalla when her hero on the sloping deck
+should have finished his last fight.  And it was not finished yet.
+Raised on one elbow, his head flung upward, his long locks, beard,
+and eyebrows were blown abroad by the wind.  He seemed less to be
+awaiting the stroke of death, than rejoicing in the majestic duel
+between the gods of fire and storm.  Though dwarfed by his mighty
+surroundings, that dying fragment of flesh and bone and sinew
+dominated all--a serene and splendid figure of defiance; a symbol,
+finely conceived and wrought, of the unconquering yet unconquered
+spirit of man.  That, for Mark, had been the inner significance of
+his theme, above and beyond his sheer joy in the swirl of the
+tempest, with one quenchless spark of human will and courage for the
+point of stillness in the midst.
+
+For days, while working at it, he had scarcely been off his feet or
+sat down to a meal, and his final spurt of inspiration had kept him
+going from breakfast-time one day till four o'clock next morning.
+The thing was unquestionably his finest achievement yet.  He had put
+more of himself into it than into any work of his hands; and he
+wondered, now, whether Bel was seeing it merely as a vigorous bit of
+drama, or feeling it, understanding it, as every artist craves that
+his work should be felt and understood.
+
+She had made few comments when first he showed her his studio, his
+inner self, except that she had not realised she was going to marry a
+genius and she hoped he was not one of the too uncomfortable kind.
+He had promptly reassured her by waiving all claim to genius and
+promising not to be "uncomfortable" if he could possibly avoid it.  A
+faint, very faint, twinge at his heart had been loyally ignored; and
+before long she had charmed him--almost--into forgetfulness that it
+had ever been there.
+
+Still, it could not be said that they made swift progress in
+intimacy.  One day she would seem exquisitely near him, and the next
+would slip distractingly out of reach.  At first this had puzzled
+him.  Then he suspected it of being deliberate; and suspicion was
+tinged with resentment.  He neither understood nor appreciated the
+feline element inherent in certain women.  Nor did he relish the
+suspicion that at times Bel could, and did, play upon him, as a
+skilled musician plays upon an instrument; that she could even
+exasperate him to the point of fury without losing an iota of her
+charm.  That charm she was at small pains to exercise on the other
+members of the household, except in the case of Maurice and Ralph.
+With them it was instinctive, simply; with the rest it would have
+been something of an effort, which apparently was not worth making.
+
+As regards Lady Forsyth--though Sheila had been better than her
+word--things did not, so far, look promising.  Just at first, for
+Mark's sake, the two had made a genuine effort at friendliness; but
+on both sides the effort was so much more in evidence than the
+friendliness that they very soon found themselves tacitly avoiding
+any attempt at intimate talk...  For this unhappy state of things
+Mark, not unnaturally, blamed his mother rather than Bel.  She, after
+all, was the older woman.  A convincing lead from her might have
+worked wonders; but the very sincerity he had always so loved in her
+had now become a stone of stumbling.  That he could understand, being
+cast in the same mould.  What he secretly resented was her
+blindness--wilful or otherwise--to Bel's charm; to the sweetness and
+goodness in her that would only, he fancied, blossom freely in an
+atmosphere of sympathetic appreciation, his mother's most notable
+gift.  How deeply he had counted on this, he now began to realise;
+but for fear of hurting her and making matters worse, he bridled his
+tongue, with the result that he, too, found himself avoiding
+occasions for personal talk.  His people, it seemed, could not, or
+would not, assimilate Bel; while Bel's whole attitude politely
+implied that she was marrying him, not his people.  But they
+three--his mother, Keith, and Sheila--were so closely linked with his
+main interest in life that it was hard to see how matters would range
+themselves when it came to the point of marriage.  And he intended to
+marry soon.  An engagement was an unsatisfactory state of affairs,
+and there was nothing to wait for that he could see----
+
+"There!  The fifteen minutes is up," he said suddenly, consulting his
+watch and stepping back again for another critical survey.  "I won't
+keep you a second longer.  She shall have her finishing touches
+to-morrow."
+
+Bel rose, yawned, stretched herself gracefully at some length, and
+then stood smiling at him, hands clasped behind her head.
+
+Maurice--unnoticed by Mark, but not by Bel--took up a fresh piece of
+paper and began a lightning sketch of her pose.
+
+"You're a model of a model!" Mark commended her warmly.  Then his
+gaze moved from her to the bas-relief, as if contrasting the two
+things he loved almost equally with two different sides of his nature.
+
+"Have you made friends with my Viking?" he asked, and she pursed her
+lips as if considering.
+
+"Frankly--I've tried to; but I can't.  The wind of him blows even
+one's thoughts about.  He's magnificent, of course.  But too stormy
+and uncomfortable for my taste; so uncomfortable that I was rather
+wondering how you could have enjoyed doing him?"
+
+Mark raised his eyebrows.  "That doesn't lend itself to explanation,"
+he said lightly.  "Some sort of natural affinity, perhaps.  I'm a bit
+stormy and uncomfortable myself, in certain moods."  He opened his
+cigarette-case and held it out to her.  "I apologise for blowing your
+thoughts about.  We'll change your view to-morrow."
+
+"Now you're angry!" she said sweetly, taking a cigarette and tapping
+it on the back of her hand.  As she did so a half hoop of diamonds
+flashed into view.  "Honesty's not the best policy, let the copybooks
+never so virtuously rage!"
+
+"I prefer it anyway," he said.  "Have a light."  He struck a match
+and held it for her.  "I hope my Lady of Dreams is more to your
+taste.  She's warranted not to stir the ghost of a breeze in any
+one's thought!"
+
+Bel came forward now and contemplated herself with undisguised
+satisfaction.  "Mark, you _have_ improved her.  She's lovely!"
+
+"Naturally.  She can't help herself, bless her," he said under his
+breath, for the pure pleasure of calling up a blush.  "Now then,
+Lenox," he added aloud, "have you the cheek to produce your
+caricature of my future wife?"
+
+"Rather!"  Maurice promptly held up for inspection a curious blur of
+blues and greens, of pale gold hair and flesh tints of doubtful
+fleshliness.  After some looking, the suggestion of a woman emerged;
+and later still, a ghostly suggestion of Bel.  It was unquestionably
+clever--and nothing more.  Mark laughed aloud.
+
+"Call that a portrait!  By the yellow blob on the top one would just
+know which way to hang it!"
+
+"Mark, you're very rude!"  Bel waved him aside with her cigarette.
+"It's queer and perverse; but _I_ rather like it."
+
+Maurice sprang to his feet and executed a low bow.  "Miss Alison, it
+is yours----"
+
+He broke off and straightened himself, for the door opened to admit
+Keith with the _Times_ in his hand.  "Your mother wants lunch at
+once," he said.  "I'm driving her into Ardmuir early on business.
+Would you care to come?"
+
+"Thanks no.  We've a private picnic on, across the loch."
+
+Mark glanced at the open sheet.  "Any fresh news?"
+
+"A few more details about that Irish shooting affray; an ugly,
+ominous business.  While our precious politicians are hurling
+epithets at each other, things over there are rapidly drifting
+towards bloodshed on a big scale."
+
+Mark's eyes flashed and he thrust out his chin.  "If fighting's
+imminent, the sooner you and I pack our things and cross over to
+Belfast the better.  At least we can help to stiffen the ranks."
+
+"Mark--you don't _mean_ that?" Bel broke in, a touch of sharpness in
+her startled tone.
+
+"Every word of it," he answered quietly, and Macnair's long mouth
+twisted as he looked from one to the other.  "I could name a dozen
+good fellows here who'd come with me like a shot."
+
+"But--what do _you_ know about soldiering?"
+
+He laughed.  "More than you think for.  I've been put through my
+paces in the O.T.C.  I can ride; I can flag-wag; and I'm a marksman,
+which is very much to the point.  You've not discovered all my
+talents yet by any means!"
+
+But Bel was scarcely listening.  Her eyes were on Keith, whom already
+she recognised as an authority on most things, including Mark himself.
+
+"You're not really going, are you, Mr. Macnair?" she asked in a tone
+of faint dismay.  "The Government would surely never let it get as
+far as civil war."
+
+Keith, more charmed than he cared to own, reassured her with his
+kindliest smile.  "I sincerely hope not, Miss Alison, for all our
+sakes.  This Austrian ultimatum to Serbia may very well set Europe
+ablaze; and at such a moment we should be worse than fools to start
+cutting each other's throats at home."
+
+Bel looked distinctly relieved.  In spite of her American phase, she
+remained essentially an islander.  For her, Europe was a vast vague
+region across the Channel, chiefly represented by Paris and the
+Riviera.  But with Mark it was otherwise.
+
+"I say, Keith," he asked sharply.  "Is that Serbian business really
+going to make things buzz?  I've done no more than squint at
+headlines lately.  And we've had such a surfeit of 'Wolf, Wolf!' one
+gets a bit sceptical!"
+
+Keith smiled.  "When you can find time to 'squint' at two letters
+I've had from Vienna and Rome, you'll be sceptical no longer.  If
+Austria wrings the last humiliation from little Serbia, Russia will
+be in it; which means France will be in it too----"
+
+"In _what_, Mr. Macnair?"  Bel's relief was swiftly evaporating.
+
+"The conflagration of Europe," Keith said gravely; and the plain
+statement sent an odd, uncomfortable thrill through them all.
+
+"But we're not Europe.  It would not mean us?"
+
+Keith gave her a direct look.  "In my opinion, Miss Alison, we _are_
+Europe and it would mean us.  Unless we recognise that obvious fact
+in time, we shall simply be marched over.  Whether our reigning
+politicians will take your view or mine, remains to be proved.--But
+there goes the gong.  And we must feed, though dynasties fall!"
+
+He hurried out and Maurice followed him.
+
+As the door closed on them, Mark, in his silent, impetuous fashion,
+turned and took the girl in his arms.  "Poor darling!  Did I frighten
+her badly?"
+
+"No.  You made her very angry!" she answered, in her most seductive
+voice; and for all apology he kissed her passionately.
+
+"It _will_ be all right, won't it?" she questioned, still in her
+childlike vein.
+
+"God knows.  I hope it will," he said.  "Anyway, if we are sitting on
+a live crater, we'll take our fill of peace and sunshine this
+afternoon.  Come along!"
+
+But at lunch there was more disturbing talk about Ireland.  Mark
+still spoke of going over if the tension snapped, though Bel had
+taken his caresses for a sign of grace.  Ralph clamoured to accompany
+him.  Sheila threatened to beg, borrow, or steal a uniform and go
+with them.  As for Lady Forsyth she seemed as bad as any one.  A spot
+of colour in each cheek heightened the blue of her eyes.  She felt
+the whole tragic tangle of right and wrong keenly, vividly, as she
+felt everything, from a pin-prick to an earthquake in the antipodes;
+and, like all truly imaginative natures, she could sink the personal
+point of view when larger issues held the field.  Bel, very wisely,
+kept silence.  Anything she might have to say on the subject was for
+one ear alone.  Meantime, she privately reiterated her opinion that
+Lady Forsyth was an odd, uncomfortable sort of person, quite unworthy
+to be the mother of Mark.
+
+Lunch ended, the "uncomfortable person" retreated to her turret-room
+to write a couple of notes before starting, and thither Mark followed
+her--an event so rare these days that she started when the door
+opened and he came in.
+
+"Mother," he plunged as usual, "the others were mostly joking at
+lunch.  But I meant what I said.  Did you?"
+
+She looked up quickly, and her eyes caressed his fine, strong face.
+"Of course I did."
+
+"Thought so.  You _are_ a real sportswoman, Mums."
+
+She sighed and smiled almost in one breath.  "A fair imitation!  I
+shall pray more fervently than ever for a peaceful solution.
+Besides--" a tentative pause--"How about Bel?"
+
+"_She'd_ be all right.  Why shouldn't she?"
+
+But the touch of sharpness in his tone betrayed him--and Bel also.
+"You might credit her with a few good qualities.  She's got as many
+as most people if you'd honestly look for them.  But you won't."
+
+"Dear, that's not true.  You might try and be fair to me.  I've done
+my best."
+
+"So has she, no doubt, though you probably haven't noticed it.  But
+it seems precious little use either way.  So the less said the
+better."  He swung round and took a step toward the door.
+
+"Oh, Mark!" she murmured, and checked herself.  He was right.  Words
+only widened the breach.  But the low sound brought him back to her
+side.  "Mums," he said, a hand on her shoulder, "is this rotten state
+of things always going on between us?"
+
+"Oh, I hope not."  She laid her fingers over his.  "'My faith is
+large in time.'  We two impatient folk must manage to have patience
+with each other.  The trouble is--forgive me, dear--I can find so
+little in her to take hold of.  It's rather like trying to grasp a
+cloud.  Later on I may arrive at the substance that must be there!"
+
+"Yes, it's _there_ right enough."  Mark's tone was curiously quiet,
+considering how she had dared.  "Are you yet convinced, Mother, that
+she cares, or do you still believe she's marrying my title and
+possessions?"
+
+Lady Forsyth started.  "Have you any doubt yourself?"
+
+"If I have, it's all your fault.  What d'you really think?  Tell me."
+
+"I think she cares more now than she did at first, though not nearly
+so much as she ought to before she becomes your wife.  You've won
+her, nominally, by the primitive process of snatching.  But you've
+yet to win her actually.  So don't be in a hurry to snatch at
+marriage.  You're still comparative strangers.  Give yourselves a
+year at least."
+
+"Oh Lord!" he groaned, "I was thinking of Christmas.  I'm blest if I
+could keep it up for a year."
+
+"Keep up--what?" she asked, amused and amazed.
+
+"Oh--you know!" he flung out an expressive hand.  "This lovering
+business.  I'm not much of a hand at the sentimental touch.  Little
+compliments and attentions and all that.  _Your_ fault again!  You
+haven't reared me that way.  Mind you, it's not that I don't care----"
+
+"Of course not!"  Her amusement was full of understanding.  "It's
+only that you're even more of a Scot than I thought you were!  Poor
+Bel!"
+
+"Not a bit of it!" he retorted; but that first touch of sympathy
+pleased him.  "I believe I'm improving.  But--after marriage, she
+wouldn't expect so much--eh?"
+
+"She might--and she might not.  Women mostly do.  And when they marry
+the non-lovering type of Scot--they suffer.  A friend of mine--an
+Irishwoman and childless--was so completely withered by ten years of
+life with a dour and devoted Scottish husband that she simply had to
+leave him, and to this day he doesn't understand why."
+
+"Hurry up, Helen!  What's come to you?" Keith's voice rang out from
+the stairs; and Lady Forsyth leapt to her feet.  "Bad boy to delay me
+like this!  But do give yourself time to get your hand in.  Promise."
+
+He smiled at her characteristic urgency.  She looked ridiculously,
+engagingly young, he thought, in her blue motor bonnet with its long
+veil floating over her shoulder, and the eyes that answered his smile
+were suspiciously bright.  Obeying a rare impulse, he stooped and
+kissed them.  "Well--just to please you," he said, "I'll try and hang
+on till Easter."
+
+"Bless you!" she whispered.  Then she waved to him from the threshold
+and was gone.
+
+For several minutes he stood there looking round the familiar
+room--that still seemed alive with her presence--in a very mixed
+frame of mind.  It was puzzling, and it hardly seemed right somehow;
+but the fact remained that, even now, this vivid, virile little
+mother of his was easily the biggest thing in his life.  To please
+her he had promised to wait till Easter.  Rather an unflattering
+discrepancy, when you came to think of it, between nine months'
+engagement and his original proposal to marry in a week.  And, with a
+sudden twinge of compunction, he hurried out in search of Bel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+  "Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won,
+  Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailéd;
+  And when a woman woos, what woman's son
+  Will sourly leave her till she have prevailéd?"
+                                            SHAKESPEARE.
+
+
+That picnic on the farther shore of the loch marked a definite step
+in the progress of their intimacy.
+
+Bel, in a distinctly coming-on disposition, proved herself at once a
+more enchanting and disturbing possession than Mark had found her
+hitherto.  First she must discover a hollow full of bracken for his
+"arm-chair"; then she must take possession of the tea-basket and
+proceed to "play at being married" with all the airy innocence of
+nineteen.  But nineteen never could have worked so simply yet
+skilfully on a man's heartstrings that, before their idyllic meal was
+over, the man in question found himself more than half regretting
+that promise to his mother.  It was almost as if Bel had guessed at
+his defection and set out to punish him.
+
+When tea was over he proffered his cigarette case.  "More
+demoralisation, I suppose?"
+
+"No; the reward of virtue!" she said, deftly extracting one with each
+hand.
+
+"I say!  Sheer greed!  What about virtue being its own reward?"
+
+She wrinkled her nose very prettily.  "Can't say I've ever found it
+so.  But then--I'm not overburdened with virtue.  So I'm entitled to
+the reward!"
+
+"Not in that form.  You're my wife this afternoon!"
+
+"So you can be as hectoring as you please?  At that rate I vote we
+remain engaged to the end of the chapter!"
+
+"Bel--if you talk like that, I'll marry you to-morrow," he threatened
+her, tempted beyond endurance; but she was gravely considering her
+two cigarettes.  Then, lifting her lashes, she regarded him with lazy
+tenderness.  "I'll be very good," she said, "and give up one of them
+in exchange--for a kiss!"
+
+Thus challenged he seized her and kissed her vehemently--lips, eyes,
+and hair.
+
+"Oh--oh!" she breathed, half in ecstasy, half in remonstrance; and he
+desisted without releasing her.
+
+"You brought it on yourself," he said huskily.  "Bel--you're a witch.
+You _do_ know how to make a man crazy for you."
+
+Her sigh expressed contentment unabashed.  But she seemed chiefly
+concerned with the cigarette in her left hand.  It was crumpled into
+a limp wreck.
+
+"There now, you've killed the poor thing," she said, holding it up
+for his inspection.  "And I might just as well have enjoyed it.  Do
+look at Bobs over there, disapproving visibly of your behaviour."
+
+Mark looked; and the Irish terrier's stump of a tail moved to and fro
+in small jerks.  The rest of him remained motionless, watchful, nose
+between paws, obviously prepared for active intervention, if need
+arose.
+
+"Good old Bobs!" murmured Mark; and two velvet ears, several shades
+darker than the chestnut head, twitched in response, as who should
+say: "I appreciate the attention, but we can't enjoy ourselves
+properly till we're rid of her."
+
+Bel snapped her fingers in friendly invitation.  But he paid no heed.
+"He's quite uncomfortably human, that dog, and he hasn't accepted me
+yet.  He's a jealous red-head, like his master--almost as jealous as
+his master's mother!"
+
+"Why do you think she's jealous?" Mark asked, instinctively on the
+defensive at the mention of her name.
+
+"I don't think.  I know.  It's quite natural.  I should be horribly
+jealous--of my son."
+
+"You would--would you?" he asked in a changed voice; and she, resting
+her head against him, answered nothing.  Possibly she thought the
+allusion might induce him to speak more definitely of their marriage;
+but he merely continued to hold her, more gently now, and to stroke
+her ruffled hair.
+
+For several minutes they remained thus, thinking their own curiously
+divergent thoughts.  Then by degrees she drew herself away, laid the
+crumpled cigarette on his knee and put the other between her lips.
+"Light, please," she said, and as he held the match for her, she
+looked searchingly into his eyes.
+
+"Bel--" he began vehemently; but she checked him with a gesture.
+"Pax!  I want to enjoy my cigarette unmolested.  Tell me more about
+the Hampshire home.  I've heard next to nothing about it yet."
+
+She settled herself to listen, hands lightly clasped round her knees,
+her eyes gazing dreamily out over the water.  Like all women who pose
+habitually and instinctively, she had the art of seeming more natural
+than genuine simplicity can ever appear.  And she had touched the
+right spring.  If Mark loved any place in the world better than
+Inveraig, it was Wynchcombe Friars.  His feeling for both was too
+personal, too deep-seated to be articulate; but he could at least
+describe externals; and he did it well.  He told her of the long,
+rambling Elizabethan house, with its oak panelling and dark roof
+beams; of the great flagged terrace, flanked by moss-covered urns,
+overlooking a forest of Scotch firs that trooped down into the valley
+and climbed the opposite ridge in massed battalions.
+
+"Outside my bedroom and studio windows," he said, "there's a very sea
+of pine tops, sinking into the hollow and rising again till they are
+splashed like dark foam against the sky.  Magnificent trees.  Most of
+'em hundreds of years old.  And the charm of it is that, on the other
+side of our ridge, behind the house, we drop down into typical
+English country: meadows and park land, and the Wynch flowing lazily
+through it; great lonely beeches and oaks, with all space to spread
+themselves in, and the grand old ruins of Wynchcombe Abbey.  You'll
+simply love it.  I'm longing to take you all over it."
+
+"I'm longing too.  It sounds very beautiful," she said with feeling;
+then paused, as if picturing the scene.  But her feminine brain was
+revolving matters more practical than pine forests and ruined abbeys.
+
+"Horses to ride?" she asked casually.
+
+"Yes; and to drive.  We're not motor-folk really.  But mother
+succumbed to one at last for long distances."
+
+"I'm glad.  I love motoring.  Are you within reasonable distance of
+town?"
+
+"Seven miles from a branch line station and bad connections.  We
+usually motor to the main line thirteen miles off.  But we're not
+great Londoners, either of us.  We've too much that's keenly
+interesting on the spot."
+
+"Rather narrowing, isn't it?"
+
+"I haven't found it so."
+
+Again she was silent, contemplating the blurred beauty of inverted
+hills in the loch.
+
+"And Wynchcombe Friars," she asked, "would be our main residence?"
+
+"Well--where else?" he said, smiling at her pensive profile and
+wondering what she was driving at.  "There's only this, besides.
+This is mother's little place--a legacy from a bachelor godfather.  I
+don't run to half a dozen establishments."
+
+"But surely"--she turned to him now, half eager, half
+anxious--"surely you have a house in town?"
+
+"Rather not.  Don't want it, and couldn't afford it.  I'm not a cocoa
+or a patent medicine millionaire.  Keeping up two estates--though
+Inveraig is not large--takes a fair amount of money.  And I've put a
+good deal into our arts and crafts centre."
+
+Her face fell so noticeably that he slipped a consoling hand through
+her arm.  "Poor little girl!  Is it a house in town she's after?"
+
+"Well, naturally I"--she coloured a little--"I thought--you kind of
+people always went the regular round--London, Scotland, and the
+country."
+
+"So we do; the social sort.  Mother and I aren't the social sort.  I
+didn't suppose you were either."
+
+"I haven't had half a chance.  But I'd like to be.  A flat wouldn't
+ruin you, would it, Mark?  Just for the season."
+
+This time it was his face that fell.  "Oh Lord!  I could never stick
+out a London season, Bel.  The very best time in the country too."
+
+"And _I_ could never exist all the year round out of town."  She
+stated the fact sweetly but with entire conviction.
+
+"Hang it all!  This is rather a serious state of affairs!" he said,
+with a lightness he was far from feeling.  "We must see if we can't
+effect a compromise."
+
+Suddenly he remembered his mother's words a fortnight ago; and
+impulsively he spoke his thought.  "Of course if you feel--you've
+been let in; accepted a baronet under false pretences----"
+
+"Oh be _quiet_!" she entreated, pain and passion in her low tone.
+"It's _you_ I've accepted."
+
+"And you'll take me as you find me?  That's all right."  His fingers
+pressed her arm.  "You do care--actively, Bel?  It's not simply a
+case of 'L'un qui baise...?'"
+
+It was a question to rouse the incurable coquette in her; and she
+flashed him a fugitive smile.
+
+"In the course of my variegated life," she said, "I've mostly found
+it more blessed to receive than to give.  But in your case--isn't my
+rather precipitate acceptance proof enough for you?  And the fact
+that you can reduce me--_me_, to asking for kisses?"
+
+"Oh--kisses!" he dismissed them with a shrug.
+
+"Well--if it's more practical proof you're wanting"--she hesitated,
+then turned full upon him, her languor discarded like a garment.  "I
+simply can't bear this crazy talk about going to Ulster.  It's no
+earthly concern of yours.  Mark--darling, _don't_ go, even if they
+are fools enough to fight."
+
+She leaned urgently towards him.  Her whole sweet face looked
+younger, tenderer, more appealing than he had seen it since that
+momentous afternoon in the glen.  So swift, so surprising was her
+change of front, that he looked openly dismayed.
+
+"You don't seem very keen on practical proofs after all," she said,
+bringing her face a shade nearer to his.  "I did think your mother
+would have the sense to discourage you."
+
+He shook his head.  "Mother understands."
+
+"That really means she gives in to your every whim.  It's the way
+mothers are made.  Specially when they own a son with a chin like
+yours!  But the modern wife isn't quite so accommodating.  And I
+suppose my feeling about it counts for something?"
+
+"Of course it does--tremendously."
+
+"Then say you won't go; and there'll be no more bother."
+
+He thrust out his formidable chin and looked across the loch with
+troubled eyes.
+
+"Darling," she persisted, "where's the _point_ of mixing yourself up
+with a purely Irish quarrel?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders, still keeping his eyes away from her face.
+
+"I suppose--a natural prompting of the blood.  Mother's a Stuart, of
+these parts, with a strain of North Ireland in her; and there's a
+link between Ulster and the south-west of Scotland that only those
+who belong there quite understand.  In very old days, the two coasts
+were so close, at points, that men could row to and fro in ordinary
+sea-boats.  And it's not a purely Irish quarrel, Bel.  It's of the
+first importance that the United Kingdom should remain
+united--especially just now.  Nothing would suit Germany better than
+Home Rule and 'Ireland-a-nation' before she throws off her mask.
+Personally, I admit I'm keen for a share in the scrap, if it comes to
+scrapping.  I've the blood of fighters in my veins.  But of
+course--if you're dead against it----"
+
+"I _am_ dead against it," she said, softly implacable, edging closer
+still.  "And _you're_ too strong to be obstinate.  Mark--you're not
+going to refuse the first thing I seriously ask you to do for me?"
+
+Her low-toned tenderness disarmed him utterly.  "No, I'm _not_," he
+said, with sudden vehemence, drawing her to him.  "I won't go to
+Ireland, Bel.  No need to worry any more."
+
+With a sigh of relief, she put her free arm round his shoulder,
+lifted her head, and kissed him on the lips.  It was the first time
+she had done so spontaneously; and, at the moment, it eased
+considerably his bitter sense of disappointment.  He said nothing,
+however, and for the rest of the evening Bel was all tenderness and
+simplicity; not a shadow of coquetry to mar the effect.
+
+
+"I think my concession deserves a special reward," he said later on,
+as he grounded the boat under Inveraig, and handed her ashore.  "You
+might chuck your Harry for once and come on up to dinner."
+
+But she demurred at that.  Honestly she couldn't chuck Harry
+to-night.  Considering Harry's views and her devotion and her
+resentment, she was taking it all beautifully--in the intervals.
+"She's done more for me in three years," Bel concluded, "than my own
+people have in the rest of my life.  So you oughtn't to grudge her
+the crumbs that fall from your table!  You've monopolised me all day;
+and she hates being alone in the evening."
+
+"Bring her along then.  _I_ don't mind."
+
+"Perhaps not, Mr. Egoist.  But she would.  She wants me to herself,
+just as you do.  Don't you see?"
+
+Mark grimaced.  "No, I don't see.  A couple of women.  Morbid rot!
+Mother says the Suffrage business is increasing that sort of thing.
+I'll be glad to get you out of the atmosphere and away from all that
+rescue work of hers."
+
+"But, Mark, it's splendid work----"
+
+"Of course it is, for her.  Quite unsuitable, though, for you.  If
+you really won't come up, I'll see you home."
+
+No, she really wouldn't.  She was resolute on that point.
+
+"Your people up there have had enough of me to-day," she added,
+smiling into his dissatisfied face.  "They're like Bobs.  They
+haven't quite accepted me yet.  And--honestly, I don't seem to catch
+on, somehow, except with Mr. Lenox----"
+
+"Not Sheila?" he asked, a little anxiously.  "I'm very keen you two
+should be good friends."
+
+"She evidently knows that, and she's doing her best.  She's sweetness
+itself to me.  But still----"
+
+"Well?  What's wrong with her?"  He was on the defensive again.
+
+"My dear, there's nothing wrong.  If there was, she'd probably be
+twice as charming.  She's the kind of tranquil angel who would show
+up beautifully against a tragic background.  But, in ordinary life,
+she seems almost too good to be true."
+
+"She's nothing of the kind," he retorted hotly, which did not improve
+matters.  But for the life of him, he could not keep cool.  "She's
+the right sort all through."
+
+"Well, if she's such a living wonder, why on earth don't you marry
+her instead of me?" Bel countered with perfect good temper.
+
+"For a very obvious reason, which you don't deserve to be told in so
+many words."
+
+"Mark, you're horrid!" she pushed him lightly with her shoulder.
+"Don't let's spoil our beautiful afternoon squabbling over a side
+issue.  No doubt we shall shake down together in the end.  Only give
+us time."
+
+Her sweet reasonableness disarmed him--for the moment.  But he was a
+long while falling off to sleep that night.  Things did not easily
+worry him; but within the last twelve hours several events of more
+than minor importance had conspired to that end.
+
+First, Bel's frankness made it clear that at Inveraig she found no
+atmosphere of genuine welcome or of home.  He must give them time, as
+she had said; but it was an unpropitious start.  Second, he had, in
+effect, saddled himself with two promises that would be far from easy
+to keep.  Third, there was the unwelcome prospect of that possible
+flat in town.  If Bel seriously set her heart on it, he did not see
+himself refusing her; though goodness knew where the money was coming
+from, or how he was going to survive large doses of London society.
+Son of a mother who treated life as an art, he lacked the
+herd-instinct of the social type.  But for all her indulgence, and
+his own imperious ways, he was not radically selfish; and beneath his
+blunt, Scottish exterior there dwelt a deep, natural tenderness for
+woman, as woman, common to the essentially masculine man.
+
+Marriage, he supposed, meant compromise; and he began to see that,
+with Bel for wife, he would have to do his full share of it.  Looking
+back over their "beautiful afternoon," he was uncomfortably aware of
+certain fundamental discords; still more aware that his mother had
+been right in several respects.  It was an annoying trick of hers.
+She had been right about Ulster; about Bel's eye to worldly
+advantage; even about the minor matter of her age.  For Mark had
+discovered, incidentally, that she was twenty-nine in June, two years
+older than himself.  Not that a year or so mattered this way or that.
+But it was an additional score for his mother; and gave greater
+weight to her curious antipathy to the girl of his choice.
+
+His disappointment about Ulster was keener even than he cared to
+admit; and here again--as his acutely wide-awake brain recalled words
+and looks and tones--a sudden vexatious doubt assailed him.  Had her
+tenderly urgent request been as spontaneous as it seemed: a genuine
+response to his question about active caring?  Or had she been
+skilfully leading him towards it all along?  Her pretty coquetting
+with the tea-things, her pretence at being married, and her casual
+mention of a son--had it all been cleverly designed to stir him to
+the depths and so make victory secure?  He hated himself for the
+suspicion.  It persisted none the less.  Yet he knew quite well that
+it would evaporate at the sight of her face and the touch of her
+lips.  Only when the spell of her presence was removed was he capable
+of doubting her for an instant; and even so, he saw those doubts as a
+reflection on himself rather than on her.  He was tired, simply;
+and--yes, more than a little disappointed.  That was all; and the
+sooner he got to sleep the better.
+
+Springing out of bed he stood a few minutes at the window looking out
+upon a world of stars in the heavens above and the waters below.
+Fitfully, through the silence, came the clear night note of the
+curlew; and the sound of the ebbing tide was like hushed voices
+talking secrets the stars must not overhear.  As a small boy, lying
+wakeful in the summer twilight, Mark had woven entrancing tales about
+those mysterious confidences between the retreating waters and the
+shore: tales that had become part of the fabric of his inner life.
+
+A few deep breaths filled his lungs with clean cool air and quieted
+his brain.  Metaphorically, he wrung the serpent's neck and flung him
+into the loch.  Then he went quietly back to bed.  Happen what might
+Bel was Bel: a bewildering wonder of womanhood, neither to be
+analysed nor criticised; but simply to be loved and cherished and--so
+far as possible--obeyed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+  "England clasps in her embraces
+  Many.  What is England's state?
+  Warn her, Bard, that Power is pressing
+  Hotly for his dues this hour:
+  Tell her that no drunken blessing
+  Stops the onward march of Power.
+
+  Has she ears to take forewarnings,
+  She will cleanse her of her stains;
+  Feed and speed, for braver mornings,
+  Valorously, the growth of brains."
+                        GEORGE MEREDITH.
+
+
+Two days later the head-lines of every newspaper in the kingdom
+announced in heavy-leaded type "Austria declares War," "Partial
+Russian Mobilisation."
+
+At hundreds of breakfast-tables incredulous people read out those few
+and fateful words.  Even at this late hour, the majority could
+scarcely bring themselves to believe that the Titanic struggle--long
+prophesied to deaf ears--had begun at last; that Austria was the
+megaphone merely through which Germany cried aloud her challenge to
+the world.
+
+Keith Macnair, it need hardly be said, was numbered among the
+minority who had seen, with anger and dismay, warning after warning
+scoffed at or ignored by a pacific Government and a comfort-loving
+people; yet he neither exclaimed, nor cursed the blind guides who had
+been sedulously whittling down the fighting strength of the British
+Isles.
+
+"Hullo!  The fat's in the fire," he remarked coolly, having pulled in
+his chair and opened the _Scotsman_ with his customary deliberation.
+"The voice is the voice of Jacob; but the hand is the hand of Esau."
+
+It was Lady Forsyth, standing behind him, who exclaimed and read out
+snatches from the Summary of Contents with heightened colour and
+quickened breath.
+
+Though Keith had all the natural man's objection to these peculiarly
+feminine methods, he bore the infliction without a murmur, till Mark,
+towering behind his mother, took her waist between his hands and
+propelled her towards the sputtering kettle.
+
+"Steady on, Mums, and feed your sheep," he commanded, standing guard
+over her.  "Your righteous wrath will only give you indigestion, and
+the elderly gentlemen who are engineering this eruption won't be one
+penny the worse."
+
+"And you ought to be grateful to them really!" Mona remarked, with a
+wicked twinkle.  "What about the German invasion you were praying
+for?"
+
+They all "ragged" her, young and old.  She was irresistible; and
+unquenchable.
+
+"Well, at least we can fight invading Germans, and we couldn't fight
+the petticoats!" she retorted, while Mark thrust a caddy spoon into
+her inattentive hand.  "But it still remains to be seen whether our
+_pax vobiscums_ will permit us to hurt a single hair of a single
+'kindred Teuton' head!"
+
+The tea was made by now, thanks chiefly to Mark; and for five minutes
+she managed to concentrate her attention on cups and saucers.  But
+throughout the meal they could talk of little else than the veiled
+drama of the nations and its probable developments.  Mark himself was
+rather quieter than usual; but perhaps he thought the more.
+
+When the younger ones went out on to the terrace, he followed Keith
+into the study, and for some time the two--who were as brothers in
+all but blood--sat together in a smoky, companionable silence, each
+absorbed in his own printed sheet.  The Irish news was by no means
+reassuring.  But Mark, to Keith's surprise, had tacitly dropped the
+subject; and it was the older man who spoke first.
+
+"I'd give something for a glimpse, this minute, into Germany's
+barracks and her sacred Kiel Canal.  If I know anything of the Kaiser
+and his gang, she's on the move already; counting on our neutrality
+of course.  God send she may find herself mistaken; but Grey will
+leave no stone unturned to avoid war.  As a philosopher and a man of
+letters, I'm with him there.  But the rest of me is convinced that
+nothing short of Treitschke's 'terrible medicine' will shake us out
+of our democratic fiddle-faddling and partisan squabbling.  It would
+link up the men and women, not to mention the Empire; and as for the
+Irish--at the first hint of real business, they'd be falling on each
+other's necks.  In that case, Mark, you and I would be for offering
+our services elsewhere."
+
+"Yes--of course.  Rather so!" Mark agreed with fervour; then checked
+himself and fell silent.
+
+Keith said nothing; but his thoughts were effectually diverted from
+the threat of war to a more personal threat that touched him very
+nearly, because Mark was Helen's son.  Being a man, he understood, as
+she could never do, the nature of Mark's infatuation for this
+alluring girl--"the ideal mistress" he classified her mentally; the
+siren-type, who sits combing her hair in the sunset and smilingly
+wrecks the souls of men.  The straighter and cleaner a man's record,
+the more easily she flings her gold dust in his eyes; and should she
+chance to fall in love----
+
+Macnair had not yet made up his mind on that score.  He was concerned
+at the moment with one painful, practical question: could she, in the
+event of war, conceivably induce Helen's son to play the coward's
+part?  He knew Mark for a man of strong passions; but he believed him
+equally strong in spirit and in will.  He felt troubled and anxious
+none the less.  Had he known of that recent surrender he would have
+felt more anxious still.
+
+Mark left the study without further allusion to the subject; and
+later in the morning Bel appeared serenely graceful, in a new yellow
+silk golf coat and a distractingly becoming hat.  With such a vision
+before his eyes no man in his senses could feel seriously concerned
+about European thunderclouds that might still, at the eleventh hour,
+dissolve in a harmless shower of rain.
+
+Bel, of course, was airily convinced they would.  "Besides," she
+concluded, with her engaging air of sagacity, "where's the earthly
+use of being an island, with an invincible Navy, if we're to be
+scared by every little flare-up across the Channel?"
+
+Mark smiled and shook his head at her.  She was ensconced in the deep
+window-sill of the studio, lightly swinging one foot.
+
+"It's not a case of being scared, but of being prepared," he said,
+fingering the stray tendrils in the nape of her neck.  "If Germany's
+engineering this squabble it'll be the biggest flare-up the world's
+ever seen; and before many days are out we may be thanking Prince
+Louis on our knees for having kept the Fleet in being----"
+
+"Oh, be quiet!" she commanded, slapping the hand that caressed her.
+"You're as bad as Mr. Macnair."  She leaned half out of the window.
+"It's a divine morning.  A boat on the loch would be more to the
+purpose than all your horrid battleships put together.  Here comes
+the midday post."
+
+"The _Times_!" cried Mark, and was promptly extinguished.
+
+"You aren't going to look at the _Times_ till to-night," she said.
+"You're to look at me in my new clothes.  What else did I put them on
+for?"
+
+The word "clothes" reminded him of an expected parcel.  "You wait
+there a minute," he said mysteriously; and very soon reappeared with
+two of them.  From the smaller, he extracted a rope of amber beads;
+from the larger, a snow leopard skin, lined with satin, to form a
+natural cloak.
+
+Bel's face, during these proceedings, was certainly better worth
+looking at than the _Times_.  The beads were the very colour of her
+coat; the pale tones and dusky markings of the skin harmonised
+perfectly with her hair; and her delight in both was too genuine to
+be marred by minor affectations.  By lunch-time Mark had almost
+forgotten the International Crisis, and the threat of war.
+
+But throughout that unforgettable week--when the world's destiny hung
+in the balance--events in Europe moved swiftly toward the great
+upheaval; while in England the tension of anxiety increased daily.
+Between those who feared that an enlightened Liberal Government would
+be criminal enough to fight, and those who feared the worse
+criminality of its failure to stand by France, there could be little
+peace of mind anywhere, except among the wilfully or constitutionally
+blind--a large majority in every country.
+
+At Inveraig they could talk of little else, except in snatches.  And
+Mark--reared by his mother to live in touch with the whole vast sweep
+of life--was as bad as the rest: though Bel, in her leopard-skin
+cloak and amber beads, was a vision enchanting enough to distract any
+man's thoughts from graver matters: and indeed she did her utmost to
+that end with fitful success.  In her heart she hated this looming
+shadow, chiefly because it dwarfed her proudest achievement--the
+conquest of Mark: and as the week drew on, she became bored; even
+faintly irritable.  She began to find or invent excuses for avoiding
+meals at Inveraig, and when Mark remonstrated, she candidly owned to
+being tired of the subject.  She wasn't accustomed to that sort of
+talk, and a little of it went a long way.  She would give him a
+holiday on Friday, she concluded graciously.  They had friends coming
+to join them at The Rowans--Mr. and Miss Maitland from his part of
+the world.
+
+Mark raised his eyebrows.  "Maitland?"
+
+"Yes.  He's classical master at High Rough School.  D'you know him?"
+
+"'M--slightly.  I've not much use for him.  Sort of chap whose veins
+run ink instead of blood."
+
+She flushed a little and lifted her head.  "He's a great friend of
+mine; so you needn't make rude remarks."
+
+"A _great_ friend?"
+
+Mark bent a searching glance upon her.
+
+"Yes: in his lukewarm way."
+
+"Oh, if he's lukewarm, he'll do!  Didn't I say his veins ran ink?
+I'll let you be polite to him on Friday, and I must have Saturday
+afternoon and evening entire as a reward!"
+
+
+But even while they talked, Europe hummed with the stir of gathering
+armies; and by Saturday morning the head-lines announced "Russian
+Mobilisation Complete."  Germany, who had secretly forestalled that
+event, responded by declaring a state of war, and an impenetrable
+veil fell between her and the outer world.
+
+Keith handed the paper to Mark, who had come in late for breakfast.
+"There you are, old boy.  I said the end of the month, didn't I?
+Russia brings in France automatically.  It only remains for Italy and
+England to show their hands.  I back Italy to keep hers clean and
+stay out of it."
+
+"And I back England to fight."
+
+"Yes--if we've still enough of the old leaven to save us from the
+curse of legal verbiage and inaction."
+
+For the rest of the meal he confined himself to intermittent
+"rumblings" (the word was Lady Forsyth's) against peace-cranks,
+Internationals, and so forth; but it was not until he had talked over
+the telephone to a friend in Edinburgh that he really let himself
+go--an event as rare as the proverbial "blue moon."
+
+For it transpired that his friend--a professor of distinction--had
+just promised his signature to a neutrality letter strongly
+protesting against England's intervention in a Continental quarrel.
+
+"Continental quarrel, forsooth!  And the damned fools, not content
+with their egregious letter, are moving heaven and earth--that's to
+say International and Labour lights--to get up a Neutrality
+Committee, by way of further assisting a divided Government that
+stands shivering on the brink.  Here we are, sunk deep in the ruts of
+peace in its most repellent form--peace, that has almost landed us in
+civil war; yet sober-minded men and women cry out against our taking
+the only course that can conceivably save half Europe, including
+ourselves, from the domination of the German machine."
+
+His quiet grey eyes had a glint of steel in them, as he stood there
+beside the telephone in the study, swept, by intensity of conviction,
+so completely out of his philosophic calm, that Helen and Mark, the
+natural talkers, never dreamed of interposing a word.  On the rare
+occasions when the spirit of speech moved him, they were willing to
+listen ad infinitum.
+
+He had descended to a lower plane now, and was confounding the
+tyranny of the week-end habit, the curse of the country, that would
+send responsible people scuttling out of town on a Friday, though the
+last trump were sounding in their ears.  He also confounded, for the
+first time in his life, that sacrosanct institution the Scottish
+Sunday, which would cut them off from letters, telegrams, and papers
+for twenty-four hours.
+
+"Never mind, old man, we've got the blessed telephone," Mark consoled
+him, clapping a hand on his shoulder.  "And we can jolly well make
+ourselves a nuisance to all our friends and relations.  What else is
+a telephone for?  I vote we run down to Glasgow on Monday and sleep
+the night.  We'd feel a bit closer to things----"
+
+An imperious tinkle interrupted him.  Admiral Sir John Forsyth this
+time.  Unlike the heads of the political world, he had come up
+post-haste from Dorset, and he wanted a few words with his nephew.
+
+It was while these things were in progress that Bel arrived, eager
+for a sight of Mark, and found herself relegated to the drawing-room
+with Sheila and Mona for company.  Sheila apologised in her
+friendliest fashion; but that was quite beside the point.  The
+appearance of the tea-tray brought in Lady Forsyth; but not till tea
+was half over did the telephone release Mark.  Then at last came her
+chance of escape; and the lovers wandered off through the pine copse
+on to the small patch of open moor overlooking the loch.
+
+"A shame to keep her waiting," he apologised tenderly.  "But this is
+history, darling, on a tremendous scale; so you must make allowances."
+
+"I'm trying to."  She dropped her lips with a bewitching air of
+martyrdom.  "But tremendous things are rather exhausting.  I can't
+get into a state of thrill, like your mother and the rest.  And I'm
+very glad--you may think what you like!--that there really is a
+chance we shall keep out of it.  Mr. Maitland says Sir Edward Grey
+has admitted that the Entente's not binding, and a Liberal Government
+can't drag a free people into the horrors of war."
+
+"Damn Maitland!" Mark flashed out; then reddened and drew in his lip.
+"Sorry.  But if you don't want fireworks you'd better keep that
+chap's inspired remarks to yourself.  Besides, you're practically one
+of us now; and I can't have you talking pacifist twaddle."
+
+"Well, don't let's talk of it at _all_.  I'm sick of the whole thing."
+
+Mark said nothing, and they walked on in silence through the heather.
+Then she turned to him and slipped a hand through his arm.  "Darling,
+let's go off somewhere to-morrow for the whole day and forget all
+about everything, except each other."
+
+"Bel!"  He stood regarding her with an enigmatical smile.  For an
+instant she thought he would consent.  "I'd love to, of course," he
+said honestly.  "But I simply couldn't do it.  Though we can't get
+papers, there's the telephone; and my mind would be on the stretch
+the whole time."
+
+She shrugged, with a faint reflection of his smile.  "Very well.
+I'll join the others.  They're going for an outing in any case.  Your
+Scotch Sunday is so desolating."
+
+"Then I'll call in for you after supper, if you're not too tired.
+Keith and I are going to Glasgow on Monday for the night.  See how
+they're taking things there."
+
+She sighed.  "This wretched war is simply spoiling everything."  Her
+shoulder touched his as she spoke, and at once he put his arm round
+her. "It seems to shut me out."
+
+"Only because you refuse to come in."
+
+"But, Mark--it's such a horror."  Her shiver was not pure
+affectation.  "And I've no taste for horrors.  I can feel it hovering
+there, across the Channel, like a tiger waiting to spring.  And when
+I try to forget it, you don't help me.  As you won't come to-morrow,
+I shall console myself by asking Mr. Lenox.  I like him the best of
+your lot."
+
+"All right; ask him.  He can keep an eye on you.  See that you don't
+flirt with Maitland."
+
+"But I do--always.  It's an understood thing between us.  And if I
+can't have you, I must get what fun I can out of him!"
+
+Maurice, though feeling the strain in his own way, accepted Bel's
+invitation, plus her proviso that no one was to say "War" or
+"Politics" from start to finish.  Privately she felt Mark's defection
+more keenly than she cared to admit, but she intended to enjoy
+herself in spite of it; and she succeeded, by the primitive process
+of playing the two men off against each other.  Maitland--a
+loose-limbed narrowly built person of nondescript colouring--had for
+years been discreetly in love with her.  He was of those for whom
+discretion is the better part of everything.  For which cause a
+penniless Bel could never become Mrs. Maitland.  But the moth
+persisted in hovering round the candle, and he had heard with a mild
+pang of her engagement to Sir Mark.
+
+Like many schoolmasters of second-rate quality, Maitland was less a
+man of intellect than of specialised culture.  Years of close touch
+with the "humanities" had failed to make him human.  He was
+humanitarian, merely: a very different pair of sleeves.
+
+Maurice, watching him with Miss Alison, saw the girl in a new light,
+and wondered a little what Forsyth would think about it.  But on his
+return he simply remarked that Maitland seemed the sort of
+schoolmaster who disseminated ignorance; that Miss Alison had been in
+great form, and they had had a ripping day.
+
+
+Early on Monday afternoon the two men set out for Glasgow; and to
+Lady Forsyth the house, bereft of their presence, seemed a dead
+thing.  A man's woman in the finest sense of the phrase, her men were
+the first best gifts of God to her.  She was their born comrade.  She
+had the rare gift of seeing life with their eyes; and through her
+nature ran a streak of inconsistency, peculiarly endearing to the
+more consistent half of creation.
+
+Even in the midst of her real anxiety lest a Government wedded to
+peace should withhold England from the path of honour and safety, her
+sensitive spirit revolted against the oncoming holocaust of death and
+suffering, with a fierce intensity of which Bel's nature was purely
+incapable.  She felt it as a vast thundercloud, stealthily,
+inexorably blotting out the light of heaven.  These days of
+waiting--days of tense and awful quiet for all who were far from the
+throbbing heart of things--were as the pause of utter stillness that
+precedes the crash of the storm.  And in that stillness she could see
+and feel too vividly things that filled her with a shuddering dread.
+The whole world's sorrow seemed to beat upon her heart, and at
+intervals through the vast diapason of universal anguish came the
+piercing note of personal pain.
+
+She knew--triumphantly, yet shiveringly she knew--what it would mean
+for her if England went into the war, not merely as a protective
+Power, but as a united Empire to challenge conclusions with her most
+insidious and most formidable enemy.  Mark would go out to France;
+and he would lose no time in going.  That was his way.  He had said
+no word of it, so far, either to her or Bel.  But she knew his
+intention, if the girl did not; and even while she shrank from the
+surrender of her last best treasure, she never dreamed of withholding
+him.  If it were really to be war on a big scale, everything,
+everyone must go....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+      "Thy trumpet lies in the dust...
+      Help me to don my armour!
+  Let hard blows of trouble strike fire into my life.
+  Let my heart beat in pain--beating the drum of thy victory.
+  My hands shall be utterly emptied to take up thy trumpet."
+                                      RABINDRANATH TAGORE.
+
+
+"War declared--_at last_!" Keith announced, in his quiet impressive
+voice; and Lady Forsyth heard the words with an odd mingling of
+relief and dread.
+
+The next moment she was startled by a stab of almost physical pain
+near her heart.  That it was not physical she knew very well.
+Instinctively she glanced at Mark, whose eyes were already on her
+face; and there passed between them a swift, unspoken message that
+eased the hearts of both.
+
+Breakfast, usually a cheerful meal, was rather a silent affair; and
+the minute it was over Lady Forsyth slipped away to her turret-room.
+Sheila was helping Ralph pack, that he might hurry down south and
+report himself at the India Office.  Mark had gone off to the study
+with Keith; and Lady Forsyth had been sitting in her chair by the
+window for nearly half an hour before she heard his step outside the
+door.
+
+She turned, with his name on her lips; but her throat felt
+constricted, and no sound came.
+
+In response to that mute appeal, he dropped on one knee beside her
+and laid his hands in her lap.  It was his old boyish trick when he
+came to confess a delinquency and knew himself forgiven in advance.
+
+"Mother," he said, "we've got to put everything into this, you and
+I--to the uttermost farthing.  All our men must go.  And I must give
+'em the lead myself."
+
+His voice was steady, and there was a light in his eyes that she had
+never seen there yet.  For all her courage, her own smile was a
+rather misty affair.
+
+"You're my uttermost farthing," was all she could say.
+
+"Yes.  It's bitter hard luck on you.  But--you don't grudge my going?"
+
+She shook her head.  "The greater my treasures the greater my gift.
+This widow's mite is a very large mite!" she added, smiling bravely
+now, and passing her hands slowly over his broad shoulders down to
+his elbows where they rested.
+
+For answer he looked steadily into her eyes.  The faint, yet
+perceptible barrier raised by his engagement was levelled utterly;
+the old blessed sense of comradeship restored.  Friction between them
+was purely a surface affair.  The moment they touched fundamentals,
+they were one.  And Mark, for his part, was aware of a restfulness in
+this deeper understanding; a restfulness that he had missed of late
+without knowing it.
+
+He knew now, very well; and she saw that he knew: but he only said,
+"I was sure I could count on you.  Keith, approves, of course.  I
+rather thought of going down at once with Ralph.  You know--it's
+enlisting I'm after.  The quickest way----"
+
+"Oh Mark--not that!"  Her hands went up in protest; and, for the
+first time, there was sharp pain in her voice.
+
+"Now be a good Mums and listen without interrupting," he commanded,
+imprisoning her hands.  "We're simply going to have the biggest rush
+to the colours that the world's ever seen.  I'm sure of it.  And it's
+up to us 'aristocratic noodles' to give the sacred working-men, of
+our sacred democracy, a thumping good lead.  That's what I meant
+about my own fellows.  Thought you understood----"
+
+"But, my dear--" she checked herself, half laughing.  "Have you done?
+May I interrupt now?"
+
+"You have interrupted!  Always do.  Go ahead!"
+
+"Well, this is how _I_ feel about it.  Scores and scores of our
+blessed noodles will enlist, for the very reason you've given.  The
+thing will be overdone, and if there's a shortage anywhere, it'll be
+among the officers.  Then the wrong sort of men will get commissions
+and numbers of the right sort will remain stuck in the ranks: one way
+of democratising the Army!  Horrible idea!  I believe, as you very
+well know, in the true aristocracy of breeding and character, in its
+duties even more than its privileges; and above all in its innate
+spirit of leadership, that can be trained but not made.  That's
+why--especially in a war that will exceed all others in horror and
+intensity--I strongly object to wholesale squandering of officer
+material, our most precious possession."
+
+"But, mother, I'm not an officer," Mark protested, adding with a
+twinkle: "You're having a jolly long innings, you know!"
+
+"Well, I must speak now.  It's my only chance.  And you're officer
+material, Mark.  You'd make a fine one, with a minimum of training.
+You've got it in you.  Will you--for once admit I may be in the
+right?"
+
+He regarded her quizzically.  "I was determined not to, when you
+started."
+
+"Well, at least consult Keith and Uncle John and Uncle Everard before
+you do anything drastic!  You wouldn't have to wait long for a
+commission.  We've heaps of interest--Frank Gordon and Jim Stuart,
+not to mention others, would do anything for you in that line.  I
+don't want to be selfish or unpatriotic, but you've admitted it comes
+hard on me.  Why make it needlessly harder?"
+
+To her entire amazement he flung his arms round her and leaned his
+head against her shoulder.
+
+"You blessed little mother," he said under his breath.  "You're as
+plucky as they're made.  Our share in this war shall begin with a
+private victory for you!  And let's hope it may be a good omen!"
+
+Taking her head between his hands he kissed her fervently, and she
+clung to him without a word.
+
+At last he sighed and stood up, very erect, looking out across the
+sunlit water to the shadowy hills.  Her eyes took the same direction;
+but the familiar scene was no more than a bright quivering blue of
+colour.  For a moment they both felt oddly shy of each other.
+
+Presently it passed, and Helen looked up at her son.  "I can't say
+what I'm feeling, Mark.  But I don't think you'll regret my victory.
+Besides, there's Bel."
+
+"Yes.  Poor Bel," he said in a changed voice.  "She hates the whole
+business.  And she'll hate it worse than ever now.  But if she plays
+up as you have, she'll do!"  He glanced at his watch.  "She'll be
+here in a minute.  I must go and meet her.  Don't stay and brood
+alone, Mums.  Go down and talk to Keith.  He wants to rush into
+Ardmuir this morning and fix up a recruiting show for Friday.  Sir
+Mark Forsyth in the chair!  On Saturday I vote we go south.  There'll
+be a thundering lot to do.  This food panic's disgraceful.  Famine,
+indeed!  As if we hadn't a ship afloat."
+
+She put her hands to her temples.  "It makes one's head spin.  I'll
+go soon, dear, but I must have a few minutes alone--to take it all
+in."
+
+So he left her, and went slowly down-stairs with a preoccupied look
+in his eyes.  It was scarcely the look of a lover eager to meet the
+beloved after two days' absence; and in truth his natural eagerness
+was dimmed by a lurking doubt as to how Bel would receive his
+announcement.  The contrast between the utter confidence he had felt
+in his mother's acquiescence and his curious lack of confidence in
+the girl he meant to make his wife hurt him horribly.  He blamed
+himself for it, as a matter of course; but deep down, he knew that
+doubt did not come readily to his nature; that never yet had he
+doubted where he loved.
+
+From the front door he caught sight of her at the far end of the
+drive, moving in her graceful, leisurely fashion, head bent, eyes on
+the ground.  She was wearing the yellow silk golf coat and the amber
+beads, and the distractingly becoming hat; and, of a sudden, Mark
+realised with a pang, how, in the last few days, the great issues at
+stake had dwarfed everything--even Bel.
+
+But now that the tension was over, the die cast, her spell reasserted
+itself; and a great wave of tenderness flowed through him.  It would
+be hateful having to leave her: but he was so made that the question
+of choice simply did not enter his head.
+
+Now he hurried forward, convinced that so great an occasion must lift
+her above herself.  It was always the same: at sight of her, doubt
+grew shamefaced--and fled.
+
+Before he reached her, she looked up and waved with her parasol, and
+Bobs, suddenly recognising her, bounded forward with eloquent tongue
+and tail.  While she was patting him, Mark came up and quietly
+slipped a hand through her arm.
+
+"That's good," he said, with a sigh of satisfaction.  "Come to our
+summer-house on the heather and have a talk."
+
+As he led her towards the copse she gave him one of her soft
+side-long glances, whether of scrutiny or affection it were hard to
+say.
+
+"Bobs is more demonstrative than his master."
+
+The answering flash of his eye and tongue were direct as his whole
+nature.  "You won't induce me to kiss you in the open drive by your
+base insinuations!"
+
+And it was not till they reached the depth of the little wood that he
+came to a standstill; a strange light of exaltation on his face.
+Then he drew her to him and kissed her with a still intensity of
+passion, as if he would make her understand the measure of his love
+before telling her that which, perversely taken, might seem to throw
+a doubt on it.
+
+When he released her, she stood back a little and smiled on him, rosy
+from his kiss, hands laid lightly on his breast.
+
+"Are you as glad--as all that, to get her back?" she asked.
+
+"More than all that--heaps more.  I agree with Robert Louis.
+Separation has its good points!  But we'll soon be suffering from too
+sharp a taste of it--scores of us.  I suppose you deigned to glance
+at the head-lines this morning?"
+
+"Yes, of course."  She frowned.  "It's horrible--beyond belief.  Rex
+says it simply means that, in spite of all our science and progress,
+the world's not civilised yet."
+
+"More fool he, to imagine it was.  Patches of it are half-civilised,
+that's about all.  And enough too.  Over-civilisation, goodness knows
+why, has a queer tendency to rot men's souls.  Makes the body too
+comfortable, perhaps."
+
+"Rubbish!  That's one of your fads just because you're against
+progress."
+
+"Not I, in the right direction.  I'm only against the modern craze
+for rushing wildly round a fixed point and getting nowhere.  This war
+may set the clock back, but I bet it'll get us somewhere before it's
+done with us."
+
+He was back at the unavoidable subject again; and this time he
+resolved to have done with shilly-shallying.
+
+They had reached the summer-house fronting moor and loch; and as he
+stood aside to let her pass in, she said, smiling: "I like the way
+you barbarians justify your own point of view!  Anyway, I suppose
+you're all satisfied now, and things will be a little more normal?"
+
+"Normal?"  His shock of surprise sounded in his tone.  "How can they
+be normal when we've got to fight for our lives against a Power like
+Germany?  Who'd wish them to be?  I'm afraid you haven't read much
+_more_ than the head-lines, Bel.  There's no end to think of: no end
+to do.  As soon as I've rounded up my fellows here, we must go back
+home and round 'em up there.  I wanted to enlist myself, but mother's
+persuaded me to apply for a commission.  She's splendid about it, and
+I'm counting on you to be the same."
+
+"Mark!"  Her surprise was no less than his own.  She sank upon a
+wooden seat near the window and looked up at him, with eyes that had
+gone suddenly chill and hard, like bits of blue glass.  "Have you
+quite gone off your head?"
+
+Words and tone produced a horrid revulsion of feeling.  But he
+answered her with studied quietness.  "I was never saner in my life."
+
+She received that statement with a faint lift of her brows.
+
+"You can stand there and tell me--me--you're going to fight in the
+most awful war there's ever been, as calmly as if you were talking
+about ordering a new suit, in spite of all I said about Ulster?"
+
+"Ulster!  Good Lord, you're not building on _that_?" he cried,
+enlightened at last.  "My darling girl, can't you see for yourself
+that there's no shadow of comparison?  That was a matter of personal
+choice.  Something I could give up for your sake--and I did."
+
+"Well, if you really--care, you ought to give up this too.  It's not
+fair on me, or your mother.  Fighting is the soldiers' business.
+Leave it to them."
+
+"A few hundred thousand against millions--eh?"
+
+"That's the Government's fault.  Besides, we've plenty of
+Territorials and things."
+
+His short laugh sounded more impatient than amused.
+
+"A lot you know about Territorials and things!  They're thousands
+below strength.  And anyway, Bel, it's not a question of
+Territorials--or of caring.  It's a plain matter of duty."
+
+"Well, you've money and brains.  You could do quite good work in lots
+of other ways."
+
+"And round up better chaps than myself to go out and fight for me?
+No, thank you!  There'll be too many ready to take shelter behind
+that plausible excuse.  If they feel they can do so honestly, let
+them.  Anything I could do at home could be equally well done by
+mother and Keith.  Did you happen to notice the 'Call to Arms'?  Do
+words like that leave you unmoved?"
+
+"N-no.  But it means common men, not men with big responsibilities
+like you."
+
+"Bel, that's pure quibbling.  It says 'All,' and it means 'All.'
+Could any man, I ask you, with a shred of conscience or love for his
+country, read that and remain at home rotting round with recruits and
+committees?  I couldn't, that's flat.  This war is either a crusade
+or a meaningless horror.  And for me--it's a crusade.  I'm not
+talking hot air.  There's too much of that in the papers already.
+I'm only trying to make you see that I've no choice.  I can't stand
+outside--even for you."
+
+"That simply means you won't," she said very low.  He sighed and
+stood silent, baffled, yet unshaken, looking out over the
+sun-splashed heather.  Then it occurred to him that, being a woman,
+persuasion might move her though argument failed.
+
+He sank on one knee and put his arm round her.  "Darling," he urged,
+"I can't bear hurting you like this.  War is cruelly hard on the
+women: but you only make things worse for us both if you let it come
+between us."
+
+He felt her stiffen under his hand.  "It has come between us
+utterly," she said.  "All this week it's been getting worse.  If you
+talk till all's blue, I shall never see this--with your eyes.  So it
+just amounts to this.  You must either give up your quixotic notion
+of patriotism, or ... you must give up ... me."
+
+She spoke with more than her usual deliberation.  The words seemed to
+drop out clear and hard as pebbles.
+
+"Bel!  You don't mean that!" he cried, hurt to the quick.  "It would
+simply break my heart."
+
+His sincerity was so plain, that her own heart thrilled in response.
+She slipped a hand round his head.  Her fingers drifted with a slow
+caressing movement over his hair; and her voice took its most
+seductive tone.
+
+"Mark, darling, if that's true, keep me--keep me.  I'm yours, if only
+... you'll stay out of the fighting!"
+
+Instantly he released her and sprang to his feet--angry, miserable,
+desperate.  Yet still, in his very desperation, he argued, pleaded,
+and exhorted her afresh: without result.  He had struck the layer of
+adamant beneath her skin-deep tenderness.  She could not, or would
+not, see things in their true proportion; and, finally, her hardness
+stung his pride into life.
+
+"It's Maitland, I suppose, who's been perverting you," he flung out
+angrily.  "Better marry him, if you're so keen on a husband who
+prefers to let others do his fighting for him."
+
+At that she swept to her feet, the incarnation of dignity, and looked
+him full in the eyes.  "Rex has nothing whatever to do with it.  And
+your other suggestion doesn't deserve an answer."  She stood silent a
+moment; but he neither spoke nor moved.  Then: "I--I'm going now,"
+she said.  "We shall be leaving here very soon."
+
+"No hurry.  We're going ourselves on Saturday."  He was watching her
+fingers.  She had drawn off his ring, and she tendered it him without
+a word.
+
+Still he made no move.
+
+"Take it," she whispered, "it's yours--now!"
+
+"_I've_ no use for the beastly thing," he answered between his teeth,
+and lifting it from her palm he flung it out into the heather.
+
+Her dignity and coldness went to pieces in a flash.  "Oh Mark--what a
+sin!" she cried sharply; and hurrying out, she knelt down and began
+feeling, with fingers that shook a little, for her vanished treasure.
+
+Mark, watching her from the threshold of the summer-house, did not so
+much as notice that faint tremor.  The red mist of anger clouded his
+brain.
+
+"So much for a woman's sense of proportion!" he said bitterly.  "It's
+not a sin for you to smash me up because I refuse to play the
+shirker.  But it's a sin to chuck away fifty pounds' worth of
+diamonds.  Money's sacred--if nothing else is.  Keep it if you find
+it, or it'll go straight into the loch."
+
+As she rose to answer him, her eye lighted on the gleaming thing, and
+with a sigh of relief she picked it up.  "Sooner than that, I will
+keep it, though I can't wear it," she said.  "Besides, you may think
+better of this."
+
+"Not until the Germans do," he answered, and she knew he meant it.
+"Don't return any other trifles, or they'll go the same way as the
+ring."
+
+"Then I suppose--it's good-bye."
+
+He heard the faint tremor in her voice.  But at that moment her very
+tears would scarce have moved him.
+
+"Oh, good-bye," he said casually, his face hard as a rock.  "Whatever
+happens, let's preserve the decencies."
+
+She caught her breath as if he had struck her; then turning she
+walked away through the heather, gracefully, deliberately, with the
+familiar swing of her parasol at each step; even as he had seen her
+walking towards him half an hour ago.
+
+He had blamed himself for doubting her, and she had justified his
+doubts up to the hilt.  In spite of the dull pain and anger within
+him, his eyes followed her, clung to her, till the last gleam of her
+yellow coat disappeared among the trees.
+
+Then, with the look of a man stunned, he sat down near the
+window-ledge and bowed his head upon his arms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+      Vanish every idle thought,
+      Perish, last of Folly's ways!
+  All that pride of eye hath sought,
+  All that rebel flesh hath wrought,
+  Utterly reduced to naught,
+       How can ye outlive these days?
+                                      X.
+
+
+That was how his mother found him when she came in search of him.
+The lunch-gong had brought no Mark; and no one had seen him, except
+Maurice, who, from his window, had caught sight of the lovers
+entering the wood.  All the morning she had been secretly anxious.
+Now she felt certain something was wrong, and telling the others not
+to wait, she fled out to his favourite haunt, hardly knowing what she
+expected to find.
+
+He did not hear her till she set foot in the summer-house; and the
+wild idea smote him--Could it be Bel?
+
+With a start he looked up; and at sight of his face Lady Forsyth's
+heart stood still.
+
+"My darling Boy, what _has_ happened?"
+
+Mark frowned and straightened his shoulders.  "She's chucked
+me--that's all," he said in a dazed voice.  "They've poisoned her
+point of view between them."  His eyes challenged hers.  "Mother,
+you've been right all along.  I suppose--you even foresaw--this!"
+
+"Dear, indeed I didn't."  Her hand closed on the rough woodwork.  She
+so longed to gather him to her heart.  "I was anxious--a little.  But
+I hoped better things of her."
+
+"So did I.  We were a pair of fools, it seems.  And there's an end of
+_that_."  With a gesture he dismissed the subject, and added, almost
+in his normal voice, "What about the meeting?  Any luck?"
+
+"Yes.  People are quite keen.  But--you'll hardly feel like speaking."
+
+"Oh, I'll speak all right.  The King's affairs come a long way first.
+I've had enough of false perspectives this morning.  I'll probably
+speak all the better for having--flung in everything."  He sighed.
+"Give me to-morrow, Mums, to pull myself together, and I'll do any
+mortal thing that's required of me.  But I can't show up yet--you
+understand?  And it's you that must do the telling--as before!"
+
+A spasm of pain crossed his face and she passed a hand over his hair.
+
+He drew back sharply.  "Oh--not that," he murmured; then checked
+himself and tried to smile.  "Sorry.  I'm feeling--all raw, Mother.
+I can't be civil even to you."  He could not tell her why the feel of
+a woman's hand on his hair was unendurable, and would be, for some
+time to come.
+
+"I understand, dear," she said, and turned to go.  "Shall I send
+anything to the studio?"
+
+He shook his head.  "Later on, perhaps.  Dinner time.  You might come
+up yourself."
+
+"Of course I will."
+
+And so she left him.
+
+Lunch was nearly over when she got back.  They had kept some hot for
+her; but she hardly touched it.
+
+Briefly, without comment, she told them her news: and escaped with
+Keith into the study.  To him she could speak more freely.  He loved
+Mark like a brother; a good deal more, indeed, than the average
+brother: and she knew--though neither had spoken of it--that he had
+shared her distrust of Bel.
+
+But her thoughts and her words were of Mark only as she stood beside
+the man who so intimately shared their lives, her small hand clenched
+upon the edge of the high mantelshelf; tears in her eyes; but none in
+her voice.
+
+"He faces trouble so exactly like his father," she said, when she had
+told him of Mark's refusal to postpone the meeting.  "But Richard's
+phlegm went deeper.  Mark, underneath, has all my terrible
+sensibility; though he won't let me see it except accidentally."
+
+Keith said nothing.  He was not given to superfluous comment; and on
+the whole she found his silences more satisfactory than other
+people's talk.  He knew she was more or less thinking aloud.  She was
+not even looking at him, but at a full-length photograph of her
+husband--a powerful figure of a man.
+
+"It's so strange," she went on in the same subdued tone.  "I
+sometimes see Richard's very self looking at me out of Mark's eyes.
+When the look comes I seem actually to feel him there.  Twice this
+morning I've seen it.  Once when Mark spoke of war and again when he
+spoke of--that wretched girl.  Oh Keith--I hate her!"
+
+The low voice broke unmistakably; and she bowed her forehead on the
+back of her hand.
+
+Macnair stood looking at her, his keen eyes clouded with tenderness.
+A moment he seemed to hesitate, then deliberately, he laid his hand
+on her shoulder.  "Helen, don't break your heart over it," he said.
+"We men pull through these things: and Mark is made of sterner stuff,
+if I know him, than to let a girl like Miss Alison smash him up for
+good.  More likely to do that by marrying him than by leaving him.
+There's a crumb of consolation for you!"
+
+She raised her head now and smiled at him through tears that were not
+allowed to fall.
+
+"If there is such a crumb anywhere, trust you to find it!  What a
+blessing you are to us, Keith!"  As his hand slipped from her
+shoulder she caught and held it a minute.  Then her thoughts went
+back to her son.  "I wonder--will he ever have eyes for Sheila again,
+after this?"
+
+"More likely after this than before.  Sheila's a born mother-woman, a
+little Sister of Compassion.  And we men are such fools, that we're
+very apt to overlook the beauty of that type till we've suffered a
+few hard knocks from the other sort.  The revulsion from that type,
+when it comes, is curiously complete.  But it takes time.  As for our
+Sheila, whether she would have him, after this, is another matter."
+
+Helen sighed.  "I can't forgive Maurice yet," she said.  "I wonder if
+he'll enlist?"  And their talk slid back to the one all-absorbing
+subject--the War.
+
+
+As for Mark, he spent that interminable afternoon tramping endlessly,
+aimlessly over the hills; hoping by the mechanical motion to deaden
+thought and ease the pain within.  Where all memory was intolerable,
+it hurt him most to recall how cruelly she had tempted him by tone
+and touch; as it were bribing him to be false to his own convictions.
+The whole thing bewildered almost as much as it hurt him.  There were
+moments when he came near to hating her; proof, though he did not
+realise it, that the love she evoked was strongly tinctured with
+baser metal.
+
+And all the while Bobs, the incurably faithful, trotted to heel or
+gambolled coquettishly under his master's eyes without eliciting a
+word or caress.
+
+Hunger and lengthening shadows drew him back at last to the home he
+loved yet now acutely desired to avoid.  She had poisoned even that.
+Yet how his heart ached for her!  How the unregenerate blood in his
+veins craved the touch of her lips and hands.
+
+He reached his study without encountering anything more human than a
+stray housemaid; and there the first thing he lighted on was his own
+tender and beautiful little Study of Contemplation.  Standing just
+inside the door, he feasted his eyes on the soft, still face, the
+small head with its close-fitting cap of hair and the long-limbed
+grace of her figure.  Then rage flamed in him.  He felt like smashing
+the thing with a hammer and flinging away the pieces as he had flung
+away her ring.  A mere pulse-beat of hesitation saved him and the
+artist prevailed over the man.  He could not murder the work of his
+hands.  Later on, he would give it to Maurice to wean him from the
+sin of impressionism.  Meanwhile, he lifted it as tenderly as he
+would have touched the original, put it away in a corner cupboard and
+turned the key.
+
+He had scarcely done so when he heard his mother outside.
+
+"Open the door, dear," she said.  "My hands are full."
+
+He opened it and relieved her of a tray set out with appetising food
+and wine.
+
+"Stunning of you, Mums," he said.  "I'm hungry."
+
+To her delight he ate everything and drank three glasses of wine,
+while they discussed ways and means; the money they could realise,
+the men they could raise for England in this most critical hour of
+her destiny.  Except for the absence of laughter and badinage in
+their talk, it was as if nothing abnormal had happened.  But Lady
+Forsyth did not fail to note the disappearance of his terra-cotta
+treasure; and she was sinful enough to hope it had been destroyed.
+
+She stayed more than half an hour and left him with a fervent "God
+bless you!"  But this time she attempted no caress.  She understood.
+
+
+Next morning, after breakfast, she lingered in her turret-room,
+wondering what he would do with himself, hoping he would come and let
+her know.  He did come; and her heart ached at the tired look in his
+eyes.
+
+"I'm going to take the _Watersprite_ up the loch, Mums," he told her.
+"And I'll be away all day.  Grant has stocked her well, so I shan't
+starve.  Don't be an idiot if I'm late and go imagining I've drowned
+myself.  At a time like this, a man's life is not his own to chuck
+away.  Besides, I'm not the sort.  And--there happens to be you," he
+added with a travesty of a smile.  "On the whole I'd sooner have the
+honour of being shot by the Germans----"
+
+"Mark--don't!"  She drew in a sharp breath.
+
+"Sorry, Mums.  But it's true.  By the way, as I'm wasting some
+valuable time hadn't we better stay over Sunday?"
+
+"That would make things easier," she admitted.  "But I thought--you'd
+rather get away soon."
+
+"My dear Mother, don't fash yourself with fancies.  If it'll ease
+things, we'll jolly well stay.  _I_ don't care a damn."
+
+The spark of irritation was purely refreshing: and he never
+apologised to her for "language" accidental or otherwise.  So
+complete was the comrade spirit between them that he prided himself
+on his habit of speaking to her straightly as man to man.  More than
+once, in University days, he had filled some prospective visitor with
+envy by the casual remark: "Don't be alarmed if you hear me scrapping
+with my mother.  She's the right sort.  I can talk to her just
+exactly as I talk to you."
+
+Now, in answer to his outburst, she said quietly: "Very well, Monday.
+I'll tell the others."
+
+"That's all right.  And don't you be a fool about me!"
+
+So he left her and she did her best to obey him; but the faint
+consolation that his trouble brought him nearer to herself was
+obliterated by her acute consciousness of his hidden pain and
+resentment against the cause of it.
+
+That grey, weary Thursday seemed as if it would never pass.  Clouds
+had rolled up out of the west.  Scudding showers lashed the loch; and
+through them she could picture Mark driving the little steam-yacht he
+loved.  Long after sunset he came back wet to the skin; but looking,
+on the whole, more like himself.  He had fought and conquered
+something out there in the rain and wind.  But he spent what remained
+of the evening in his studio as before.
+
+On Friday evening, when they were gathered in the square hall waiting
+to start, he strode casually downstairs and nodded his greetings as
+if he had merely been away for a couple of nights.  He had prepared a
+speech, he said, that ought to make the men of Ardmuir sit up to some
+purpose: and Keith, watching the little incident from the study
+threshold, murmured: "Well done, old boy!"
+
+A second car had been ordered to accommodate the party; and while
+they made ready, Mark was left momentarily alone with Sheila in the
+hall.
+
+Then she took courage and looked up at him.
+
+"Mark--I'm so sorry," she whispered.  "I may say that much, mayn't I?"
+
+For a second he held her gaze.  Then: "You may say anything you
+please," he answered, "when you look like that!  Truth is," he
+paused, "she's never been taught to see things the right way.  It was
+just--that one couldn't make her understand."
+
+"Poor Bel!  She must be very unhappy."
+
+"Bel--unhappy!"  His astonishment was manifest.  But then--Sheila had
+not seen the look in her eyes.  "I doubt it," he added with a touch
+of bitterness.
+
+"_I_ don't," the soft voice persisted.  "She's bound to be--if she
+cares."
+
+"But if she cared, how _could_ she----?"
+
+The note of pain in his voice gave her still more courage.
+
+"You said--she didn't understand, and that poisons everything."
+
+Touched to the heart he said impulsively, "Sheila, what a wise little
+Mouse you are!"
+
+It was his old nickname for her and she drew in a quick breath.  "Not
+so very!  But I do know--about caring."
+
+"The first best knowledge surely," he said: then Keith appeared and
+bade them hurry up.
+
+But her eyes, shining on him through tears, and her words that gave
+him a new point of view lingered in his memory.  Odd how readily he
+could speak of Bel to Sheila, how hardly to his mother, with whom he
+could talk of everything in earth or heaven.  And surely no one but
+Sheila could have been inspired to couple sympathy for himself with
+so tender and delicate a plea for Bel.  If she were right, if Bel
+were really suffering, the door of hope might still be ajar.
+Meantime there was his speech; for which he had made comprehensive
+notes; there were convictions and appeals that he must drive home to
+the hearts of his hearers; and while he sat smoking in silence beside
+Keith--who drove the car--words full of vigour and fire came crowding
+into his brain----
+
+When at length he stood on the platform waiting for his clamorous
+welcome to subside, the flame of his conviction burnt away all
+nervousness, all dread of failure; and for half an hour he spoke as
+none had imagined he could speak, himself least of all.
+
+"First rate," Keith said quietly as he sat down amid a storm of
+cheers.
+
+"Heaven knows how I did it!" he answered under cover of the noise.
+"Wish I could bolt now."
+
+But the Provost had risen and was praising him to his face; a far
+worse ordeal than the one he had so triumphantly weathered.  The
+recruiting result, in figures, was not sensational: but Ardmuir was
+obviously impressed.  It begged leave to distribute Sir Mark's "great
+recruiting speech" as a leaflet; and Sir Mark, privately overwhelmed,
+gave gracious consent, with the air of one who made brilliant
+speeches as easily as he ate his breakfast.
+
+"Really, old boy, you ought to stand for Parliament," Keith said as
+they drove home.  "If that speech of yours is well distributed, the
+men will soon be tumbling in.  One has to give them time up here.
+The Radical spirit is so strong in our beloved country."
+
+"And the beauty of it is that the bulk of 'em, if they only knew it,
+remain Radicals just _because_ they're so conservative!"  Mark
+retorted with a flash of his mother's humour.  "But Parliament--no
+thanks; not yet awhile."
+
+Saturday was given over to rounding up his own men and business
+connected with his mother's small estate.  That evening he conquered,
+not without difficulty, a temptation to stroll down into the village
+and discover whether The Rowans was yet empty of its treasure; and
+when the last post came in he knew.
+
+Glancing through half a dozen envelopes, he came suddenly on Bel's
+handwriting.  His mother, who was watching him, saw, without
+appearing to see, that he pocketed all his letters unopened and,
+after a reasonable interval, rose and left the room.  It was easy to
+guess what had happened; and she rated herself for the horrid sinking
+at her heart.  She could not sleep till she knew: but as Mark did not
+reappear, she went up early and, in passing, knocked at his door.
+
+"Good night, dear," she said.
+
+He opened it and stood before her--transfigured.
+
+"Come along in, Mums."  Drawing her forward he closed the door behind
+her.  "Read that!"
+
+He thrust a faintly scented sheet of note-paper into her hand, and
+she obeyed.
+
+Bel's communication was brief, moving, and very much to the point.
+
+
+"Are you generous enough to forgive me--and come to me?" she wrote
+without preamble.  "If you can keep it up--_I can't_.  I saw and
+heard you at Ardmuir.  You are _brave_.  As for me, I'm bitterly
+sorry and ashamed.  I hate it all still.  But if you wish it, I am
+yours--unconditionally, BEL.  I shall be alone here after 10.30.  I
+can't face Inveraig."
+
+
+Lady Forsyth had to read that note more than once before she could
+feel sure of her voice.  To her it seemed studied, consciously
+written for effect: and the writing itself was equally studied, with
+the same touch of hardness in it that showed in the level line of
+eyelids and brows.
+
+"Well?"  Mark was growing impatient.
+
+"You can forgive her?" she asked, looking steadily up at him.
+
+"Of course I can.  And you must too.  She's sorry.  She--cares.
+Isn't that enough for any one?"
+
+"But she's not convinced."
+
+"_I'll_ convince her, in time.  I hope she'll come south with us
+to-morrow."
+
+Lady Forsyth drew in her lips and at once his hands came down on her
+shoulders.
+
+"Look here, Mums, I won't have you antagonising and doubting her any
+more--after this.  It spoils everything.  You might make an effort if
+only for my sake.  It's beyond belief getting her back; and your
+attitude's the only flaw in my happiness.  Has been all along."
+
+She was silent a minute, then she put her two hands on his breast.
+"Dear, I will make an effort for your sake.  I refuse to be the flaw
+in your happiness!  It's a degrading position for a mother."
+
+He stooped and kissed her for the first time since Wednesday morning.
+"Bless you!" he said.  "Good night."
+
+Alone in her room, confronting this new, unwelcome development, she
+realised how, through all the pain of his grief, she had been upheld
+by the secret conviction that his loss was gain; some day he would
+know it.  Now the old miserable uncertainty was nagging at her
+afresh.  In her heart, she distrusted the sincerity of the whole
+incident.  But she had given her word to Mark, and Bel should have
+the benefit of all the doubts in creation.
+
+
+Mark's watch was three minutes short of the half-hour when he stood
+outside the square grey house perched on the hillside above the road.
+A white curtain fluttered; and a glimpse of Bel's face signified that
+the coast was clear.
+
+When he entered the homely sitting-room and closed the door she did
+not run to meet him as a simpler woman would have done.  She remained
+standing near the mantelpiece on the farther side of the square
+table, smiling her cool provocative smile.
+
+"Mark!" she said softly.  "I've been wondering and wondering would
+you really come?"
+
+By that time the square table was no longer between them and Mark was
+holding her as if he could never let her go.
+
+"Would you have broken your heart, if I hadn't?" he asked at last.
+
+"Very nearly!" she admitted, with the slowest possible lift of her
+lashes.
+
+"But, Bel--if you cared, how could you pull it through?  How could
+you look at me with your eyes like bits of glass?"
+
+"You forget," she said, "I can act.  It was because--I cared so much;
+because I couldn't bear the idea of your taking part in that horror
+out there; and because you were so obstinate, that in the end I put
+on the strongest screw I could think of--and it wasn't so strong as I
+supposed.  That's the inner history of the last three days."
+
+He regarded her searchingly, taking it all in.  "Women are queer
+things," he said.  "Did you really suppose I'd capitulate--under the
+screw?"
+
+"I half hoped so--till I heard your speech.  Then I began to see that
+I'd never known the real Mark: only Bel's lover."
+
+"And--did you approve of the real Mark?"
+
+She laughed and kissed him.
+
+"Honestly, I found him rather alarming.  Too big altogether for a
+mere Bel.  But I wanted him more than ever.  And now I know he's
+still mine, I can't let him go!"
+
+For Mark there was only one flaw in those first raptures of reunion:
+and for that flaw his mother was unwittingly responsible.  Nothing
+would induce Bel to come up to Inveraig or to travel south with the
+Forsyths on Monday.
+
+"I can't face them yet awhile," she persisted, "specially your
+Mother.  She won't easily forgive me for hurting you so.  No real
+mother could.  Besides, she was probably thanking her stars for your
+escape; and now I've turned up again, like a bad penny!"
+
+"Bel!"
+
+But she laid her hand upon his lips.
+
+"Hush and listen to me.  It wouldn't be fair on Harry either;
+stranding her with those two.  In ten days, we can both come south
+and a regenerate Bel can dare to pay you a visit.  Their minds will
+be full of such big terrible things by then that they'll take me for
+granted.  As for you--the real Mark will be so swamped with his
+responsibilities that there would be no time for love-making, even if
+I came."
+
+In the end he was forced to admit that she was right.  Three days of
+fighting himself had not been without a steadying effect on his
+impatient spirit: and so the matter was settled.
+
+Rain and wind had ceased.  They spent all the afternoon and evening
+together on the water; and on Monday the Forsyth party travelled down
+to Wynchcombe Friars.
+
+At no time could Lady Forsyth leave Inveraig without a pang: and
+never had it been sharper than on that 10th of August with the glory
+and anguish of Belgium's gallant stand beating on her brain, and the
+poignant question at her heart--when, and in what circumstances,
+would they four see that grey rugged house and the lochs and hills of
+Scotland again?
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II
+
+THE UTTER PRICE
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+  In my heart there burns a flame;
+    But no smoke shows;
+    And no one knows.
+                        _Japanese Song._
+
+
+Wynchcombe Friars was a singularly perfect relic of the Tudor period.
+It rambled, it blossomed into irrelevant gables, it took you to its
+heart.  The lordly spaciousness of an eighteenth-century mansion
+seemed dull and featureless, by contrast with its individuality, its
+friendly charm.  And of all its beautiful old rooms was none more
+individual than Mark's studio, with its oak-pannelled walls, deep
+window-seats and leaded casements that opened upon the sea of pine
+tops he had described to Bel.  For him and his mother, it was the
+soul of the house; and in nothing was their intimacy more evident
+than in the fact that this, his holy of holies, was hers also.  A
+certain square bay-window that caught the last of the sun upon the
+pines held her armchair of dull blue brocade, her book-case and elbow
+table.  Blue prevailed also in the window-seats, the casement
+curtains and the Turkish rugs on the polished floor.
+
+The studio itself contained little beyond Mark's paraphernalia, his
+writing-table and a few pieces of priceless old furniture.  The
+spirit of Michael Angelo pervaded the place:--models of his statues
+and groups, sepia studies by Mark from the great friezes; and a
+portrait of the Florentine's rugged head occupied the place of honour
+above the mantelpiece.  The blue-tiled fireplace beneath was flanked
+by Mark's first two essays in statuary: symbolic figures of Triumph
+and Defeat.  Triumph, a splendid nude, stood poised upon a rock; arms
+uplifted, head flung back.  Defeat, a fallen Lucifer, still sullenly
+defiant, leaned upon his battered sword; a figure of sombre strength.
+The Viking, who accompanied Mark on his moves, was set in a dark oak
+niche that served for frame and threw him into strong relief.
+
+Still, beneath all the beauty and friendliness of the room, there
+lurked the same unobtrusively ascetic note that had been more marked
+in the simpler studio at Inveraig.
+
+So at least thought Maurice Lenox, who lounged smoking in an
+armchair, wondering, secretly, how Mark could bring himself to leave
+it all, patriotism or no.  He, personally, had found it quite enough
+of a wrench to shut up his modest rooms in Chelsea--till when?  God,
+or the devil, alone could tell.
+
+He had gone straight from Inveraig to his home in Surrey, wondering
+what possible use there could be for such as he in this terrible
+_galère_:--he, who had small knowledge of firearms and so heartily
+detested taking life that he could not even find pleasure in fishing.
+Mark had suggested enlisting in the Artists' Rifles: a suggestion
+since confirmed by Sir Eldred Lenox, with a blunt admonition to look
+sharp about it.  Sir Nevil Sinclair, of Bramleigh Beeches, commanded
+them.  He would send the boy's name up for a commission the moment he
+was reasonably fit for it: and on the whole Maurice found it a relief
+to have the question of choice taken out of his hands.  He had
+stipulated for a few days of his promised visit to Wynchcombe Friars,
+before taking the plunge; and those few days--with Macnair for the
+only other guest had laid the foundation of a genuine friendship with
+Forsyth, whose finer qualities shone out notably in this hour of
+crisis.
+
+Whereas at Inveraig he had at times seemed selfish and a trifle
+dictatorial, here, as responsible land-owner, his mastery and force
+of character showed in a new light.  And as for selfishness--his
+whole mind seemed set upon the welfare of his people and his place in
+the coming time of stress.  Now, at the very moment when he was most
+needed, and most longed to be on the spot, he was cheerfully and
+actively engaged in transferring the reins of government into other
+hands.  To Maurice--a man of random moods and many points of
+view--such strength and singleness of purpose seemed enviable as it
+was admirable; and the fact that Forsyth had remained unshaken even
+by Miss Alison's defection had made a deep impression on the lighter
+nature of his friend.  Since then, he had learnt a good deal more,
+not only of Sir Mark in a fresh manifestation, but of England's
+greatest asset--sadly misprized in a democratic age--the hereditary
+lords of the land.
+
+To-day his brief respite was over.
+
+At the moment, he and Mark had effected their escape from the
+infliction of war-talk, as perpetrated by Mrs. Melrose and the
+Vicar's wife, at the tea-table on the terrace.  Sir Mark's sudden
+engagement, by the way, had been a severe shock to Mrs. Melrose, who
+suspected that Sheila must have played her cards remarkably ill.  But
+that, after all, was how one might expect her to play cards of any
+worldly value.  She was her Melrose grandmother all over.  Not a drop
+of Burlton blood in her veins.  But the war had dwarfed that personal
+disappointment: and the good lady was brimming with benevolent
+schemes for herself and the whole neighbourhood.
+
+Meantime the Vicar's wife held the field.  Having come in quest of a
+subscription, she had stayed to murmur decorous and very premature
+lamentations over the undesirable features of billeting and of the
+Territorial camps: the sort of thing that reduced Lady Forsyth to
+speechless exasperation.  Mark, divided between sympathy and
+amusement, had watched her holding herself in, till the assertive
+voice of Mrs. Melrose created a diversion and dubious murmurs were
+drowned in a flood of propositions for the local housing of Belgians
+and the conversion of Wendover Court into a luxurious hospital for
+officers.
+
+"You, Lady Forsyth, with this heavenly place, ought to specialise on
+convalescents or nerve-cases"--Mrs. Melrose dearly loved making other
+people's plans--"If we all take a _distinctive_ line, there'll be no
+muddle or overlapping.  And of course dear little Lady Sinclair will
+devote herself to the Indians--when they come."
+
+Privately Helen reflected that if her neighbours continued so to
+afflict her, the first nerve-case for Wynchcombe Friars would be its
+own mistress.
+
+It was at this point that Mark had given up waiting for the
+Sinclairs.  Not even the presence of Sheila--who had come over with
+her mother and was staying on to discuss "War plans"--could detain
+him, once Mrs. Melrose held the field.  Basely deserting Lady Forsyth
+he left word that Sir Nevil, if he should turn up, would be very
+welcome in the studio.
+
+Now, while Maurice lounged and reflected, he sat at his littered
+writing-table, a pipe between his teeth, two deep furrows in his
+forehead.  Beyond that littered table the room held no other signs of
+work.  Easel and modelling pedestal stood empty.  A woeful tidiness
+prevailed, and Mark himself looked older, Maurice thought.  Small
+wonder, seeing all that he must forgo at a stroke when his name
+appeared in the _Gazette_.
+
+So, throughout Great Britain, in the same casual unemotional fashion,
+men of every grade were making the supreme sacrifice, cheerfully
+putting behind them all that made life worth living--possessions,
+talents, hardly earned distinction, cherished hopes and still more
+cherished homes.  No doubt many of them, like Maurice, privately
+rebelled; but they, too, were carried forward by the infection of
+brave example, if by no higher motive.  In Mark's company, Maurice
+had felt that infection strongly: but on this his last evening of
+freedom the artist in him raged afresh against the hideousness and
+waste and cruelty of modern war.
+
+For ten minutes Mark had been smoking steadily and silently.  He had
+a difficult letter on his mind.  Maurice, who had the horrors of
+Tirlemont on his nerves, felt suddenly impelled to more candid speech
+than he had hitherto indulged in, lest he be misjudged.
+
+"I don't know what your private feelings are, Forsyth," he plunged
+boldly; and Mark started as if he had been waked from a dream.  "But
+the more I look at this business of enlisting and going out to
+slaughter Germans--not to mention the chance of their returning the
+compliment--the more heartily I hate the whole thing.  It's nothing
+so simple as mere funk.  And it's not that I'm shirking--you
+understand."
+
+"Oh, yes.  I understand," Mark rejoined, setting his teeth on the
+stem of his pipe.
+
+But he did not seem disposed to enlarge on his understanding of his
+private feelings; and Maurice, whose mixed emotions were clamouring
+for expression, went on: "Mere funk would at least give one something
+to tackle and overcome.  It's this cursed inferno going on inside
+one's head that does the damage.  And the beastly thing seems quite
+independent of one's thoughts or attention.  Just keeps on
+automatically at the back of my brain.  Even when I'm reading or
+talking, I can hear those infernal guns and shells.  I can see the
+mangled fragments that once were men--the wounds--the blood--the
+slopes of the Liége forts----"
+
+"Damn you!  Shut _up_!"  Mark leaned forward suddenly, a spark of
+anger in his eyes.  "D'you suppose you're the only one that's plagued
+with an imagination?"
+
+Maurice sighed.
+
+"Sorry, old chap," he said, disappointed, but contrite.  "It's a
+relief all the same.  And I thought--you understood----"
+
+"Of course I do: a long sight too well."  Mark's tone was gentler
+now. "If it's relief you're after, you'll get that most effectively
+by going out yourself; seeing things with your actual eyes: doing
+things with your actual hands that'll give you no time for
+cinematographs in your head.  You can thank your stars you're a man.
+It's the women given that way who'll have the devil's own time of it.
+My mother's one, worse luck; and it'll come hard on her--when I'm
+gone."
+
+Maurice ventured no comment on a subject so poignantly intimate as
+Lady Forsyth's anxiety for her one remaining son; nor did Mark seem
+to expect any.  He took a few pulls at his pipe, then reverted to
+generalities.
+
+"Don't write me down an unfeeling brute, Maurice," he said with his
+friendly smile.  "War's the roughest game on earth and we've got to
+be a bit rough with ourselves if we're to play it to any purpose.
+I'm horribly well aware that the 'sorrowful great gift of
+imagination' is the very deuce on these occasions.  A shade less of
+it in us, who have to do the killing, and a shade more of it in our
+Westminster Olympians--who have to do the foreseeing and
+forestalling--would be a pleasanter business for ourselves and a
+better look-out for the country.  They're an agile crew with their
+tongues; and if words were bullets, we might be in Berlin the week
+after next!  Personally, I'd like to see most of 'em scrapped 'for
+the duration of the war.'  Kitchener paramount, with a picked
+Council, would pull us through in half the time.  But that's not my
+business nor yours.  It's for us to play up all we can; thank God for
+one real Man, and not waste our precious energies in grumbling.
+There's a sermon for you.  And you brought it on yourself!"
+
+Maurice rose, flung away his cigarette end, and strolled down the
+length of the room and back.
+
+"It's done me a power of good being here," he said, coming to a
+standstill by the mantelpiece and contemplating Mark's "Triumph."
+"You're a man as well as an artist, Forsyth; and the bulk of us are
+not; I, personally, am cursed with too much of Uncle Michael in my
+composition."
+
+Mark laughed.
+
+"Confound your Uncle Michael!  You run along and enlist and kill
+every German you can lay hands to and your composition will take care
+of itself.  A wee bit stiffening's all you want; and a wee bit taste
+of red-hot reality will put some backbone into your studio-bred art,
+that ennobles nothing and nobody and doesn't even want to make itself
+understood.  It's just on the cards that this war--when we're through
+with it--may give us an altogether saner and more robust revival of
+art that will spring naturally from a more robust conception of life:
+an art that will genuinely reflect the spirit of the age, as Michael
+Angelo reflects the Renaissance.  Our present age of machinery and
+money-getting has precious little spirit to reflect.  No collective
+convictions.  Practically no faith, except in success.  Consequently
+life has no vital use for art: and we're ousted by the cinematograph.
+A few, like myself and Sinclair, still hang on to beauty and the
+classics.  The rest, like the bulk of your advanced friends, say
+'Ugliness, be thou my beauty' and proceed to make a little hell of
+their own in the Grafton Galleries!  Just at present, Maurice, the
+mere artist is the most superfluous creature on God's earth...."
+
+He suddenly laughed and checked himself.  "Off on my hobby-horse
+again!  Why the deuce don't you chuck a book at me, old chap?  Too
+much spouting at these recruiting shows will make me an infliction to
+my friends.  Ah--there goes Mrs. Melrose!  Joy for Mother!  Likewise
+the devout Mrs. Clutterbuck, who thinks to advertise her own virtue
+by maligning better folk than herself.  Come on down.  We'll get the
+tail-end of tea and the poor dears will need cheering up."
+
+They found the poor dears in very fair spirits--considering.  Helen
+was delighted at recapturing Sheila; and the girl herself made no
+secret of her distaste for the restless superficial activities of her
+own home.  A telegram from Sir Nevil Sinclair explained his
+non-appearance and begged Mark not to fail him at the Bramleigh
+meeting next day.  Then, tea being removed and the others dispersed,
+Mark found himself alone with Sheila, whom he had scarcely seen since
+the day of Bel's regeneration.
+
+"It's good to get you back again, Mouse," he said, with brotherly
+directness: and as she merely smiled without looking up, he allowed
+his eyes to linger on her face.  "But I'm not sure I approve of the
+massage plan, specially if it means careering off to France with Miss
+Videlle."
+
+Sheila hesitated.  "I thought--if you married--there might be Bel.
+But if Mums really needs me, I'd leave anything, anyone ... for her.
+She knows that."  The girl's voice throbbed with feeling and a faint
+colour showed in her cheeks.  "I'm very doubtful, though, whether she
+could or would stay here long--without you."
+
+Mark started and frowned.
+
+"She must!  She'll be safe here; and there's no end of useful work
+for her on the spot.  All the same--" he paused, looking deep into
+the heart of the wood, at pine stems rosy with shafts of light.  "I
+believe you know best.  She won't stop.  She'd break her heart.  War
+comes cruel hard on the women."
+
+Sheila said nothing: but the set of her lips showed a faint line of
+strain that he had not noticed before.  "Come for a quarter-deck
+prowl with me, Mouse," he said.
+
+They paced the wide-flagged terrace, veined with moss, till near
+dinner-time; and only at the last did Mark speak the thought
+uppermost in his mind.  They had reached the far end when he came to
+a standstill and faced her squarely.
+
+"Sheila--it goes against the grain asking favours for Bel, even of
+you and Mother; but you were such a brick before; and now--it's a bit
+of an ordeal for her facing you all after--what happened up there.
+Otherwise she'd have been here sooner.  Of course I'll make her speak
+to Mums straight away, which may clear the air, between them.  But I
+want you all to be ever so kind and not let her feel a shadow of
+awkwardness.  Just pick up the threads again as if nothing had
+happened.  Will you--for my sake?"
+
+Sheila was leaning now against the balustrade, her hands pressed palm
+downwards on the stone work.
+
+"Yes, Mark," she said in an odd, contained voice, "I'll do anything I
+can for your sake.  But in my heart--" she suddenly looked up at him
+with her clear honest eyes, "I can't forgive her--ever!"
+
+"_You_?"  His surprise brought the blood to her cheeks.  "But when it
+happened you were so--understanding.  It was you who took the edge
+off my bitterness."
+
+"Because then--I didn't understand," Sheila explained with
+difficulty.  "I thought she had really lost you through her own
+blindness; and--I was sorry for her.  But afterwards, one couldn't
+help suspecting it was all ... that perhaps she was simply ...
+putting on the screw."
+
+"She admitted as much," he said, looking away across the rose garden.
+
+"Mark!  How _could_ she?"  Her low tone vibrated like a smitten
+harp-string.
+
+"That's the mystery to a masculine brain.  It hurt--considerably.
+But it seems women do these things."
+
+Sheila checked a natural impulse to repudiate the sweeping assertion.
+She saw him deliberately erecting a screen for Bel, at the expense of
+others; but she had already been candid enough, and she would not
+permit herself to insinuate disparagement.
+
+Her enigmatical silence urged Mark to add: "Bel's had her share of
+unhappiness, anyhow.  She didn't enjoy those three days much more
+than I did and she's lost more than a week down here.  So just be
+good to her, you deceptive little bit of adamant--and bless you from
+my heart."
+
+"That's bribery!" Sheila said laughing, and straightening her
+shoulders.  "I don't take payment for my services.  But it's time to
+go and dress for dinner!"
+
+As they strolled back to the house she caught herself reflecting
+quite philosophically on the impunity with which the Bels of this
+world may steal horses, while their less privileged sisters dare not
+cast a glance over the hedge.
+
+But in spite of her excuse about dressing for dinner, she seemed in
+no such hurry after all.  A sudden longing came over her to see the
+studio, to sit alone for a few minutes in that shrine of blessed
+memories: and, having seen Mark safely vanish into his bedroom, she
+made bold to venture in.
+
+Sinking into Lady Forsyth's armchair, she let the crowding memories
+sweep through her brain, while her eyes ranged from picture to
+picture, from statue to statue, as it were learning them by heart,
+because in future the right of entry she so prized would belong to
+another.  For her, Mark and his art were one and indivisible; and, by
+an unerring instinct, she dreaded the effect of Bel's demoralising
+influence on both.
+
+Dearly she loved the virile figure of Triumph; more dearly still, the
+Viking.  Him, she saw and felt as Mark had hoped that Bel might see
+and feel him.  She had been at Wynchcombe Friars during those
+wonderful days when he came to life under Mark's hands; and in her
+private heart he stood for the symbol of his creator's unquenchable
+spirit.
+
+In all these children of his hand and brain, she found the
+quintessence of the man, and it was her instinct to seek the essence
+of things.
+
+Mark himself, without and within, was all that she would have a man
+be--she, who seemed fated to attract only the "poor things" of earth.
+Since Ailsa's death and his return from Europe, she had worshipped
+him, with the still intensity of her Northern nature.  So felicitous
+had been their relation, and she so young, so happy in a home
+atmosphere the very antithesis of her own, that no afterthought had
+troubled her unclouded content.
+
+For this reason, she had been able to accept, loyally, uncritically,
+his sudden and bewildering infatuation for a girl obviously unworthy
+of him; an infatuation that could survive even his knowledge of the
+motive which had promoted Bel to such unsparing use of her power.
+Entirely one with him in spirit, she could not choose but will what
+he willed: and conviction that Bel honestly loved him had mitigated
+the pain of her own hidden disappointment in him.
+
+But now even that faint consolation was gone: and here, where
+associations were more intimate than at Inveraig, the shock to her
+belief in him seemed infinitely harder to bear.  Here the question
+forced itself upon her--how could he, being what he was?
+
+And his fresh appeal on behalf of Bel had badly shaken her innate
+capacity for acceptance.
+
+Because of that appeal--which would also be made to the others--this
+girl, who had so cruelly tormented him for her own ends, must not be
+allowed to suffer a twinge of the discomfort she so richly deserved.
+For the first time, Sheila was goaded almost to the point of
+rebellion.  For the first time her will was at odds with his: and it
+hurt more than she chose to admit.  From a child she had invented her
+own private code of courage that never allowed her to say, "I can't
+bear it."  And she would not say it now.
+
+She would do what he asked, under protest, because he asked it.  Her
+attitude, she was convinced, would matter nothing to Bel, who
+obviously looked down on her, from the attitude of her twenty-nine
+years, with a mild good-humoured contempt.  But it would matter
+greatly to Mark;--and that sufficed.
+
+She rose at last and wandered round the beloved room.  Before the
+Viking she stood a long while, trying to draw the valiant soul of him
+into her own soul: then she went reluctantly out.
+
+As she closed the door behind her, Mark opened his own and smilingly
+confronted her.  "Hullo!  Is that the way you dress for dinner?"
+
+She coloured a little under his gaze.
+
+"I couldn't resist going in--just to greet them all."
+
+"Well--you might have let me come too!  Are they such very special
+friends?"
+
+"A part of me--almost," she said very low.  "I've known most of
+them--haven't I?--ever since they were born."
+
+Then she went quickly down the passage; and for several seconds Mark
+stood looking after her.  The sudden softening of his whole face,
+could she have seen it, would have been balm to her heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+  The heavens such grace did lend her
+  That she might admired be.
+                                SHAKESPEARE.
+
+
+Next morning early, Mark drove Maurice to the main line station,
+despatched him with a final volley of chaff, and proceeded patiently
+to tramp the lane outside till the down train should bring him the
+desire of his eyes.  From the station-master he learnt that "she"
+might be anything from twenty minutes to two hours late.  Yesterday
+five specials had run through, packed with horses and men, and there
+would be more to-night.
+
+"Jolly for they Germans, sir!" he added with a jovial wink.  "They
+_do_ say now that the British Army will be keeping Christmas in
+Berlin!"
+
+"And on the other side they say the Kaiser will keep it in London,"
+Mark answered him.  "Best leave fairy tales to the Germans.  It's
+their line!"
+
+And he retired to commune with his own heart in the lane.
+
+The train gave him ample time to lose patience and recapture it; and
+the longer he waited, the brighter grew the halo round Bel's golden
+head.  Idealist as he was, in art and life, he could not choose but
+idealise the woman he loved: if, indeed, he were not rather in love
+with a phantom of his own brain, who wore the appearance and spoke
+with the voice of Bel.  During the last ten days, while his conscious
+mind had been absorbed in things practical, the subconscious,
+unoccupied artist in him had been sedulously gilding her halo; and as
+for that bewildering jar in Scotland, he had so completely credited
+her with his own sensitiveness on the subject, that his one wish was
+to make her forget it had ever been.  He had shrunk even from asking
+her to speak of it to his mother; and had made the request in his
+last letter, rather than spring an unpleasantness on her by way of
+greeting.
+
+And now--all he craved was herself.  Her letters were not the same
+thing at all.  Clever, affectionate and often amusing, they seemed
+just to miss something that, for him, was the secret of her charm.
+In them the slightly studied effect of her whole attitude to life
+seemed more definitely artificial; and after reading them, a troubled
+uncertainty was apt to pervade his mind.  But sight and touch of her
+would cure all such lover's folly----
+
+Ah--the whistle at last!
+
+He reached the platform as the train drew up, and there emerged from
+a distant carriage the tall, unmistakable figure in a bluish coat and
+skirt and close-fitting hat.  About midway down the platform they met
+and clasped hands.  She coloured a little when their eyes met; but
+they merely talked of luggage and the lateness of the train.
+
+It is a common experience, that first, faint shock of actual meeting
+after keen anticipation; and in these two it waked the undersense
+that, although they had taken the most hazardous step in life, they
+were still comparative strangers.  In some vague way they seemed to
+have lost touch; to have become suddenly shy of each other--the man
+more so than the girl.
+
+Shy or no, she was contented, utterly, to be sitting there beside him
+in the August sunlight, speeding between stretches of ripe cornland;
+between purple sweeps of heather, when they climbed a ridge; and on
+through rolling open country where the earlier trees showed a yellow
+leaf or two, and the oaks were still sunset-tinted with their second
+blossoming.  England, relying serenely upon her grey ghosts of the
+North Sea, lay dozing in the high noon of the year, while little
+Belgium, like another Kate Barlass, thrust her arm through the staple
+that the murderers might be stayed, if only for a moment.  A
+Territorial Camp, an occasional motor decked with flags, a group of
+khaki figures resting in the shade--these were the sole reminders of
+that invisible horror across the Channel, that for Bel was no more
+than the shadow of a shadow, though the cloud of it overhung her own
+life and set visibly upon her lover's brow.
+
+Every now and then she took stock of him under her eyelids, from his
+rough motor-cap and his sensitive mouth, safe-guarded by that
+uncompromising chin, to the lean, strong fingers controlling the
+machine.  A woman could safely entrust her destiny to that mouth and
+those hands, though she might wish, incidentally, that he would take
+a less exaggerated view of this singularly inopportune war.  It was
+just her luck that it should have been timed to spoil the most
+promising "phase" of her life.  If only Mark's admirable virility
+were tempered by a touch of Rex Maitland's intelligent common sense,
+matters would be so much easier and pleasanter all round.  And the
+coming interview with Lady Forsyth was a nuisance, to put it mildly:
+but still----
+
+"Have I given you time to get through the worst of your troublesome
+affairs?" she asked after an interchange of commonplaces that led
+nowhere.  "I'm hoping for a clear field as the reward of my lost
+week."
+
+He gave her a contrite glance.
+
+"I wish it were clearer.  Russell, my land-agent, has played up like
+a Trojan.  But the wood seems to thicken as one goes on.  And to-day
+I'm booked for a recruiting show at Bramleigh.  No getting out of it.
+Sir Nevil Sinclair--the artist, you know--said I must manage to
+placate you somehow.  So please be placated and save me the managing!"
+
+Down went the corners of her mouth.  "Our first day!  And not even
+Mr. Lenox to play with."
+
+"Won't Sheila do?"
+
+"As a substitute for _you_?  Mark, your modesty is incredible!  Is
+she with you still?"
+
+"She came back yesterday."
+
+"And Mr. Macnair?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Are they part of your permanent family, those two?"
+
+"More or less.  People just accrue to Mums.  Are you placated
+now--Queen of Wynchcombe Friars?"
+
+She laid gloved finger-tips on his knee.
+
+"I'm trying to be.  I vowed a vow to be heavenly good this time, to
+make up for...."
+
+His hand closed on hers.
+
+"That's over and done with," he said.  "I'm sorry--even about Mother.
+But it seemed only fair.  I'll take you to her straight----"
+
+"I'd prefer half an hour first with her son--not in a motor on the
+open road!  Darling, give me time to feel more at home."
+
+His eyes sought hers.  "I'm agreeable.  We'll stop at the gate and go
+up through the wood.  I can fetch the car afterwards.  No superfluous
+attendants these days!"
+
+On a cushion of moss in the cool of the pine-wood, they recaptured
+the atmosphere of Scotland and the little cloud of estrangement
+melted away.  Mark, who had keenly felt the momentary jar, was the
+more relieved.
+
+"Now, my darling girl, time's up," he said, reluctant, but
+inflexible; "Mother will be picturing us wrecked on the road, and
+sending poor old Keith to pick up the pieces!  Come."
+
+At that, she knelt upright, and, with a charmingly tender air of
+proprietorship, passed her hands over his head, bringing them to rest
+on his shoulders.  "I'm glad I've found you again," she said.  "That
+strange man at the station rather alarmed me."
+
+"You knew how to conjure him away, you witch!" he answered, stopping
+her lips with a kiss.
+
+She accepted the kiss, but not his tacit dismissal of the subject.
+For her, a new sensation not analysed was a sensation wasted.
+
+"I suppose it was that things hadn't time to crystallise properly
+after the break," she went on, twisting a button between her finger
+and thumb.  "I hope the War Office will be merciful and allow us a
+good spell this time.  Separations are rather uncanny things.  You
+never quite know----"
+
+"Well, if you don't know me when I get back this evening," he said,
+with perfect gravity, "the marriage that has been arranged, etc., had
+better not take place."
+
+"Mark!"  Her voice had a sharp, startled note.
+
+"That'll learn you!" he retorted, smiling.  "We'll make out our
+'para' to-morrow."
+
+And he heard no more of the subject.
+
+They found Lady Forsyth alone in the drawing-room reading her midday
+post.
+
+"My dears!"  She sprang up to greet them.  "We've been wondering what
+had come to you."
+
+Mark explained, asked a few questions, backed casually towards the
+door--and vanished, leaving the women alone.
+
+Bel had resolved that there should be neither awkwardness nor
+hesitation.  Already she had rehearsed the little scene half a dozen
+times; and as the door closed, she turned to the small, upright
+figure near the piano, both hands flung out.
+
+"Dear Lady Forsyth, you _are_ going to forgive me, aren't you?  I
+know I don't deserve it.  But Mark has been so beautifully
+generous----"
+
+"That is easier for him than for his mother," Lady Forsyth rejoined
+with her disconcerting frankness: but her smile made partial
+atonement and she took the proffered hands.  "Not that I'm belittling
+Mark's generosity.  It takes a just man to be generous even in
+exasperating circumstances; and Mark possesses that rare quality in a
+high degree.  He particularly wants us all to make light of the whole
+matter; and--to please him, Bel, I can at least condone what I can't
+pretend to understand."
+
+This--as may be supposed--was not precisely the due Bel had prepared
+for herself.  But she had the adaptability of the born actress; and
+she recognised that Lady Forsyth had paid her the embarrassing
+compliment of speaking her mind as to a daughter.
+
+"That's rather a crushing form of forgiveness!" she said, with the
+pretty droop of her lips.  "And I don't suppose it's much use trying
+to explain...."
+
+"Not the slightest, my dear."  Lady Forsyth's tone was brisk but
+kindly.  "Facts, like beauty, are best left unadorned.  I take it for
+granted you must have been very much upset to hurt a brave man so
+unnecessarily.  Had your refusal been final, I could have better
+understood."
+
+The girl flinched at that and bit her lip.  "You don't sound much
+like forgiving me.  And I don't think," she made bold to add, "that
+Mark would be quite pleased if he heard you."
+
+"He would probably bite my head off," Lady Forsyth answered, taking
+the wind out of her sails.  "And if you want to make him angry with
+me, you can tell him what I have said.  I should say just the same if
+he were present.  Mark and I are in complete accord, however much we
+squabble.  He knows my bark is worse than my bite: and you'll soon
+know it too, Bel.  So don't let's write in brass what is meant to be
+writ in water.  We shall gain nothing by making Mark our apple of
+discord.  He's a very large apple, big enough for two!  Now, after
+that, let me 'behave' and show you to your room.  Later on, you must
+see over the dear old house."
+
+"Yes.  It's a dream of a place."  Bel swerved thankfully to a more
+congenial subject and the still more congenial reflection that all
+this stately, soft-toned beauty would some day be her own.
+
+Once this wretched war was over, everything would go swimmingly.  He
+would settle down and shed some of his troublesome ideals.  That flat
+in town--which she had already chosen and furnished mentally--would
+be the best possible antidote for what she vaguely styled "that sort
+of thing."  She washed her hands and tidied her smooth hair in a
+frame of mind too serene even to be clouded by the prospect of a
+whole afternoon without Mark.
+
+And downstairs, alone in the drawing-room, Lady Forsyth was playing
+Grieg's Temple Dance with a fire and fury that brought Keith in from
+the terrace, startled concern in his eyes.
+
+"Bless my soul, Helen!  Who are you wanting to murder now?  The Crown
+Prince or one of our own super-Solomons?"
+
+"Neither," she answered, crashing out the last double chord.  Then,
+swinging round on the stool she faced him with heightened colour,
+head in air.  "It's Mark's future wife.  And I'm in terror that he'll
+want to marry before he goes out.  Keith--it's not only wicked
+prejudice.  I distrust her more than ever.  She came to me with a
+pretty, ready-made apology which I am afraid I dislocated by my
+incurable candour.  Then, having let fly for my own satisfaction, I
+proceeded to smooth things over for love of Mark.  Told her my bark
+was worse than my bite."
+
+"That I can swear to," Keith struck in smiling.
+
+"Still--by every oath I mustn't use, if I was a natural savage
+instead of a Christian woman, who adores her son, I'd _bite_ her with
+all my teeth--There!  Between that and Grieg, I feel a little better.
+But, oh, you sagacious bachelor, you have your divine compensations.
+At times it's a positive curse to love any human thing better than
+your own soul."
+
+"It is that," Macnair agreed with quiet emphasis, as the door opened
+to admit Mark himself.
+
+The air seemed still to vibrate with Helen's impassioned outburst,
+and he glanced quickly from one to the other.
+
+"What have you two been plotting--eh?"
+
+"The wholesale reconstruction of the universe!" Keith answered
+lightly; but Mark went straight to his mother and laid his hand on
+her.
+
+"She's been working herself up about nothing," he said.  "I can feel
+her quivering all through.  Keith, you oughtn't to encourage her.
+She'll be needing all her reserves of strength, if she's to pull
+through this.  Would the drive to Bramleigh calm you down,
+Motherling?  Or would it churn you up again, hearing me speak?"
+
+"No: I should love it," she answered in a low voice.  The invitation
+and the touch of his hand had soothed her already, as nothing else
+could have done.  It was as if, by some telepathic process, he had
+divined the cause of her emotional stress; and when the two girls
+came in he said casually, without removing his hand: "I'm carrying
+Mums off with me to Bramleigh.  You've had your drive, Bel, and the
+outing will do her a power of good."
+
+The announcement faintly ruffled Bel's conviction that all was for
+the best in this best of all possible worlds.  But later in the
+evening, when her own turn came, when she wandered with Mark through
+the terraced gardens down to the river, he found her apparently
+satisfied, if not communicative, as regards her interview of the
+morning.  Convinced of her own supreme sovereignty, instinct told her
+that she would gain nothing by "giving the woman away."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+"I am the Fact," said War, "and I stand astride the path of Life....
+There can be nothing else and nothing more in human life until you
+have reckoned with me."--H. G. WELLS.
+
+
+That same evening, a good deal later on, Lady Forsyth sat at her
+dressing-table, brushing out her hair, recalling, with pride, Mark's
+vivid speech, the cheers, the record "bag" of recruits, and wondering
+if he would forget to come for his usual good night.
+
+His room opened out of hers; and the door between stood chronically
+ajar--a companionable habit begun in her first days of loneliness
+after his father's death.  He rarely missed the little ceremony of
+early tea, when he would establish himself at the foot of the bed and
+argue or read aloud, or simply "rag" her, as the spirit moved him.
+Then he would wander in and out, in the later stages of dressing,
+hindering and delighting her in about equal measure.  Or they would
+carry on a violent argument through the open door, a pair of
+disembodied voices, till some climax would bring one or other
+gesticulating to the threshold.  These morning and evening hours were
+the times of their most formidable encounters, their wildest
+nonsense, their utmost joy in each other's society, exhibited in a
+manner peculiar to themselves.  At night the "hair-brush interview"
+had become a regular institution.  It might be over in ten minutes or
+last till midnight, according to their mood.  This was the time for
+graver matters, for the give and take of advice; and although there
+might be little outward show of sentiment, those hours of comradeship
+were among the most sacred treasures of the mother's heart.
+
+To-night she brushed till her arm ached, listening for his footstep;
+and the moment she put the hated thing down, he came, bringing with
+him the whiff of cigarette smoke she loved.
+
+Standing behind her, he took her head between his hands, lightly
+passing his fingers through her hair and smiled at her in the glass.
+She was responsive as a cat when her hair was caressed; and he knew
+it.
+
+"Poor deserted little Mums!" he said.  "Had you given me up in
+despair?"
+
+"Absolutely."
+
+"And how long would you have hung on past despair point?" he asked
+with a twinkle.
+
+"Probably half an hour....  What have you done with your lady-love?"
+
+"Ordered her to bed."
+
+"So early?  All for my benefit?  I scent an ulterior motive."
+
+He laughed and pulled her hair.  "Your instinct's infallible!  It's
+this marrying business.  I know I promised to wait; but the whole
+face of the world has changed since then."
+
+He detected the faint compression of her lips.
+
+"Mums, you're incorrigible.  She's a delicious thing."
+
+"Who says otherwise?"
+
+"You do--internally!  Not a mite of use throwing dust in my eyes.
+When you're converted--as you will be--I shall know it, to the tick
+of a minute.  Meantime"--he moved over to the window and stood there
+facing her--"the question is, in a war like this, oughtn't one to
+marry, if possible, before going out?  She got on to war weddings
+this evening, and I was tongue-tied.  That mustn't happen again.
+What's your notion?  D'you still think--wait?"
+
+A pause.  She dreaded, as he did, the possibility of Wynchcombe
+Friars passing into the hands of Everard Forsyth and his son, whose
+views were not their views, except in matters political.  Had the
+wife in question been Sheila, her answer would have been
+unhesitating.  As it was, she parried his awkward question with
+another.
+
+"What do you think yourself, Mark?"
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Oh, you clever woman!  I have my answer.  And in this case I believe
+you're right.  Personally, I'm game to marry her at once.  But ...
+there are other considerations.  Seems her precious Harry's been
+rubbing into her that these war marriages aren't fair on women--that
+it's a bigger shadow on their lives losing a husband than a lover.
+It's a tragic sort of start, I admit; and once we're married the
+wrench of separation would surely be harder for both.  Then, as
+regards myself, you know how this coming struggle has obsessed my
+mind; how we've doubted, both of us, the spirit of modern
+England--the selfish, commercial spirit of the red-necktie brand.
+And now that I see the old country shaming our doubts, I simply want
+to fling myself into this business--heart and brain and body.  And,
+frankly, I've a feeling I could give myself to things with a freer
+mind ... as a bachelor.  That's the truth--for your very private ear.
+Thirdly and lastly, if we married, she ought to be here with you, and
+I'm doubtful if you'd either of you relish that arrangement, lacking
+me to do buffer state.  See?"
+
+"I do see, very clearly," she answered, regarding him with grave
+tenderness, her elbows on the table, her chin in her hands.
+
+"Thought you would.  There's only one thing worries me.  As my
+wife--if the worst happened, she'd at least be well provided for.
+Seems she has literally no money, and a very fair gift for spending
+it."
+
+Helen's quick brain--lightened by her relief--sprang to instant
+decision.  "You could settle that by adding a codicil to your will.
+Those investments of father's that are not tied up with the place
+would give her quite a comfortable income."
+
+"Capital!" he cried, slapping his leg.  "Fool I was not to think of
+it.  Simply forestall my instructions about her marriage settlement.
+We'll fix it up at once and I'll talk things over with her to-morrow.
+See how she feels about it herself."
+
+They discussed details for another half-hour; then, in his peremptory
+fashion, he ordered her to bed.
+
+"God bless you," she whispered as he shed a kiss on her hair.  "This
+afternoon I was the proudest mother in England."
+
+"O fool woman--just because I caught the gift of the gab!  With
+practice I might even degenerate into a politician.  Just as well I'm
+in for a few years of the silent service.  Go to sleep quick, and
+don't let yourself be bogey ridden by German devilments."
+
+But though wisdom endorsed his command, she disobeyed it flatly.
+There was no sleep in her brain; and instead of going to bed, she sat
+down in the window-seat, leaned against the woodwork and looked out
+upon the still serenity of garden, terrace, and pine wood, softly
+illumined by an unclouded moon.  The very peace and beauty of those
+moonlit August nights had an uncanny power of intensifying the inner
+visions that daylight and ceaseless occupation kept partially in
+check.  She could not now look upon the moon without seeing the
+sacked villages, the human wreckage of battle that the same impartial
+goddess illumined, over there, on the shell-battered fields of
+Belgium and France.
+
+Earlier in the day her spirit had been uplifted by Miss Sorabji's
+beautiful letter "England in Earnest," by her exhortation, from the
+Gita, "Think of this not as a war, but as a sacrifice of arms
+demanded of the gods."  But now, in the peace and silence of night,
+it was the anguish of the flight from Tirlemont that lived before her
+eyes and chilled her blood.  Too vividly, she pictured the flaming
+town; the rush of panic-stricken people; women and children, shot,
+bayoneted, ruthlessly ridden down.  And already there were whispers
+of things infinitely worse than killing--things unnamable, at thought
+of which imagination blenched----
+
+From that great, confused mass of misery there emerged the pathetic
+figure of one fugitive peasant woman and five children who stood
+bewildered in the Place de la Gare, crying all of them as if their
+hearts would break.  That morning the German soldiery had killed the
+woman's husband and trampled two of her children to death before her
+face--a minor item in an orgy of horrors.  But it is poignant
+personal detail that pierces the heart: and the acute realisation of
+one mother's anguish brought sudden tears to Helen's eyes.
+
+So blurred was the moonlit garden, when she looked down into it, that
+a shadow moving at the end of the terrace set her heart fluttering in
+her throat.
+
+Spy hunting and spy mania were in the air.  Almost every day brought
+its crop of tales, credible and incredible: horses poisoned wholesale
+at Aldershot, mysterious gun-emplacements, hidden arms and ammunition
+in the least expected places.  Even allowing for exaggeration, such
+rumours were sufficiently disturbing.  They gave a creepy, yet rather
+thrilling sense of insecurity to things as perennially and unshakably
+secure as the Bank of England or Westminster Abbey.  Nor could even
+these symbols of stability be reckoned immune, with the financial
+world in convulsions and a mysterious fleet of Zeppelins threatening
+to bombard London!
+
+In the over-civilised and over-legislated world, that came by a
+violent end in July, 1914, the uncertainty of life had been little
+more than a pious phrase, spasmodically justified by events.  Now it
+was an impious fact, vaguely or acutely felt almost every hour of the
+day--by none more acutely than by Helen Forsyth with her quick
+sensibilities and vivid brain.  Even Mark admitted that she was
+keeping her head creditably on the whole; but in certain moods she
+was quite capable of demanding a drastic search for gun-emplacements
+in her own grounds or suspecting a secret store of ammunition among
+the ruins of Wynchcombe Abbey, all on the strength of a semi-German
+gardener dismissed years ago.  Only last week a suspicious,
+Teutonic-looking individual had come to the back door and put the
+cook "all in a tremor" by asking superfluous questions about the
+neighbourhood.  And now this mysterious wanderer in the garden--at
+such an hour----!
+
+She was on her feet, brushing aside the tears that obscured her
+vision.  But the shadow had vanished behind a bush and did not seem
+disposed to reappear.  For a second she stood hesitating.  If she
+called Mark, he would either laugh at her or scold her for not being
+in bed.  The creature was probably harmless.  She would creep
+down-stairs quietly and explore.  For all her nerves and fanciful
+fears, she was no coward in the grain.  Hastily twisting up her hair,
+she slipped on a long opera coat and crept noiselessly down into the
+drawing-room.  There she found that the French window leading on to
+the terrace had been left unlocked.
+
+"How careless of Mark!" she murmured; and, with fluttering pulse,
+stepped out into the moonlight.
+
+There he was again!  Summoning all her courage she went forward,
+uncertain even now what she meant to say.
+
+The shadowy figure had turned.  It was coming towards her.
+Then--with a start of recognition she stopped dead.
+
+"Keith!" she exclaimed softly, and could have laughed aloud in her
+relief.
+
+"Helen--what are you doing out here?" he asked, an odd thrill in his
+low voice.
+
+"What are you doing?" she retorted.  "Frightening me out of my life!
+I saw a suspicious-looking shadow; and--don't laugh at me--I thought
+it might be a spy."
+
+"And you came down to tackle him alone!  Just like you!  Supposing it
+had been?"
+
+"Oh--thank goodness it's not!  But don't you ever give me away."
+Helen's laugh ended in an involuntary shiver.
+
+"Cold?" he asked quickly.
+
+"No--no!  Let's walk a little and feel normal."
+
+He moved on beside her, anxious, yet deeply content.  Then: "Helen,"
+he said suddenly.  "If you're going to let things get on your nerves
+like this, you'll be done for.  Your best chance is to take up some
+absorbing war-work; the harder the better."
+
+"What work?  And where?"
+
+He caught a note of desperation in her tone.  "Scrubbing hospital
+floors?  Or playing about with Belgians and invalids here, while
+Sheila is at Boulogne, you scouring France in our car, and Mark in
+the thick of it all?  He wants me to stay here, I know.  But, Keith,
+I simply _can't_.  What else, though, can a useless woman of fifty
+do?"
+
+"To start with, she can refrain from calling herself useless, which
+is a libel!  To go on with--"  He paused, regarding her.  The
+supposed spy was meditating a bold suggestion.  "Helen--could you ...
+would you ... come out with me as my orderly?  If so, I could confine
+my activities to the Base.  I verily believe you'd find the real
+thing less nerve-racking than the nightmares of an imagination like
+yours.  But, could you stand it, physically?  And ... would the
+conventions permit?"
+
+Her low laugh answered him straight away.  "My dear Keith, talk of
+inspiration!  It would just save my soul alive.  I can act infinitely
+better than I can endure.  I should feel nearer to Mark.  And as for
+the conventions, I hanged them all years ago.  What harm, if the poor
+dead things are drawn and quartered?"  She checked herself and looked
+up at him.  "Will you take your Bible oath that I shouldn't simply be
+in the way?"
+
+"I'll take it on as many Bibles as you like to produce," he answered,
+with becoming gravity.  "But I'm thinking ... for your sake ...
+another woman....  How about Sheila?"
+
+"Sheila!  Lovely."
+
+"Would she give up her precious massage?"
+
+"If I wanted her she'd give up anything.  But--the massage wouldn't
+bring her up against the worst horrors.  Your work would.  And she's
+full young--barely three and twenty."
+
+"She is that.  Though, if I'm any good at observation, I should say
+the stature of her spirit is far in advance of her years.  She gives
+me the impression of great reserve power, that girl.  She never seems
+to put out her full strength, or to waste it in kicking against the
+pricks."
+
+"One for me!" Lady Forsyth murmured meekly.
+
+"Yes, one for you!  And I make bold to prophesy she would be worth
+five of you in a painful emergency!"
+
+He made that unflattering statement in a tone of such extraordinary
+tenderness that she beamed as at a compliment.
+
+"Let the righteous smite me friendly--when I deserve it!  You seem to
+have made a close study of my Sheila.  It only remains to secure her
+services and Mark's consent----"
+
+"_Mother_!"  His deep voice called suddenly from the window.  "I'm
+ashamed of you.  Come to bed at once!"
+
+"Coming!" she called back, adding under her breath: "Keith, remember
+I only came down for a book.  And you found me locking you out."
+
+Then she hurried away, obedient always to the voice of her son.
+
+Nightmares had been effectually dispelled.
+
+
+Bel's hope that the War Office would be merciful was not fulfilled.
+The Juggernaut across the Channel would not stand still at any one's
+bidding.  The Great Man who worked day and night, creating new
+armies, had need of every promising semblance of an officer he could
+lay hands on; and Mark's name was a recommendation in itself.
+
+Bel was given little more than a week in which to be "heavenly good";
+and it must be admitted that she made the most of it.  She took
+kindly, on the whole, to Mark's solution of the marriage problem.
+How far her acquiescence was due to his exceeding thoughtfulness in
+the matter of money it might be invidious to enquire.  There remained
+the fact that Harry O'Neill--scenting a possible war wedding--had
+skilfully put forward her own pronounced views on the subject; while,
+incidentally, spoiling her idol more egregiously than ever.  And the
+girl herself leaned towards a more auspicious beginning of her
+married life.  Mark found her oddly superstitious on the subject;
+and, with her gift for evading unpleasant facts, she had risen
+readily to the optimistic conviction that the war would be over by
+Christmas or the New Year.  Apparently it did not occur to her, or to
+others of her persuasion, that a short war could only spell victory
+for Germany.  But there seemed little use in dispelling an illusion
+that kept her happy; and, in her case, could do no harm.
+
+So she clung unchallenged to her comforting belief; and, the great
+question being settled, Mark was free to consider other matters.
+
+First and foremost, there was Keith's amazing proposition to enlist
+Mums--a project that did not square with Mark's private plan for
+keeping her safely wrapped in cotton wool and harmless war-activities
+at Wynchcombe Friars.  Son-like, he had scarce realised how
+infinitely dear she was to him, till her eagerness to cross the
+Channel had driven him to consider the possibility in all its
+bearings.  And the inclusion of Sheila in the programme brought to
+light his hidden tenderness for her that seemed in no way diminished
+by his passion for Bel.  Why the deuce couldn't the women be
+reasonable, and stay in England where there would be work enough for
+all?  And what business had Keith to go encouraging them?  But so
+plainly were the three enamoured of their idea that in the end he had
+not the heart to damp them.
+
+In the privacy of his thoughts, he thanked goodness that Bel could be
+trusted not to emulate them; though her attitude towards the war was
+now less hostile than it had been.  The very air she breathed was
+impregnated with war-fever, war-talk and war-realities.  It was
+increasingly evident that new war-activities were going to become the
+fashion; and she was of those who unquestioningly follow a fashion,
+lead it where it may.  Having no taste for the menial work of
+hospitals or for tending the sick and wounded, she had elected to
+help in some sort of women's work engineered by Harry, "the Cause"
+being temporarily extinct.  So far as possible she turned away her
+eyes from beholding and her heart from feeling the full measure of
+the invisible horror, which, to more imaginative minds, became too
+acutely visible and audible during that critical last week of August,
+1914.
+
+For by now, across the Channel, the Great Retreat had begun.  Days
+that, at Wynchcombe Friars, slipped by all too fast, seemed over
+there, to have neither beginning nor end.  Common standards of time
+were lost in that ceaseless, sleepless nightmare of dogged marching
+and still more dogged fighting, whenever Prussian hordes gave the
+broken remnant of an army a chance to turn and smite, as the British
+soldier can smite even in retreat.
+
+It was from Le Cateau that an officer friend sent a pencil scrawl to
+Mark.
+
+
+"It is quite evident that we have taken the knock badly.  With any
+other army one would say we're beaten.  But Tommy doesn't understand
+the word.  You can only beat him by knocking the life out of him.
+And even when you think he's dead, chances are he'll get up and kick
+you.  People at home simply haven't begun to know what heroes these
+chaps are.  Makes me sick even to think of certain supercilious folk,
+I seem to remember, who thought the worst of any man in uniform on
+principle.  Great Scott, they're not fit to lick Tommy's boots."
+
+
+Mark handed that letter to Bel.
+
+"There's one in the eye for your precious Maitland," he remarked
+coolly.  "Copy it out verbatim, please, and send it to him with my
+compliments!"
+
+And Bel obeyed with exemplary meekness.  She had rather objected to
+the tone of Maitland's last letter; and, in her own fashion, she was
+very much impressed.  Heroism, a long way off and entirely
+unconnected with one's self, was an admirable thing in man.
+
+
+It was near the end of August, when the Channel ports were being
+evacuated and the fall of Paris seemed merely a matter of days, that
+Mark at last found his name in the _Gazette_ coupled with that of a
+distinguished Highland regiment; and in record time he was
+ready--uniform, equipment, parting presents and all.
+
+Like most of his race and kind, he would have preferred an informal
+departure--casual "good-byes," as though he were going off on
+business for a week or so.  But he had won the hearts of his people
+by justice, understanding, and the personal touch that was a
+tradition at Wynchcombe Friars: he had inspired them, by precept and
+exhortation, to give of their best ungrudgingly; and he could not
+deny them the legitimate thrill of speeding his departure with
+congratulations and cheers.
+
+Only on Sunday, his last day, he evaded one ordeal by limiting his
+attendance at church to early service with his mother.  Bel had
+little taste for early rising, and Mark did not press the point.
+
+In the afternoon he delighted his humbler friends--wives of the
+gamekeeper, the coachman and the manager of his arts and crafts
+colony--by calling on them in full uniform.  Though he occasionally
+wore the kilt and glengarry at Inveraig, his Hampshire folk had never
+seen him thus attired; and their open admiration was so embarrassing
+that, after several hours of it, he returned limp and exhausted,
+clamouring for whisky and soda and the society of Bel, who could
+always be trusted to keep her admiration within bounds.
+
+To her he devoted the evening; and early on Monday the more personal
+farewells must be said, the cheerful, casual note vigorously
+maintained.  It was not "the real thing" yet; and the women, in their
+hearts, prayed that the "the real thing" might be deferred for many
+months to come.  Meantime, unless England was favoured with an
+invasion, he would be safe enough on the south-east coast of
+Scotland; and later on, if rooms were available, he would permit his
+mother and Bel to intrude upon his violent industry for a week.
+
+Keith drove them all to the station, and behold, outside the grey
+stone gateway, an impromptu guard of honour lined the road to
+Wendover: villagers and farm hands, weavers and metal-workers, women,
+children, and ineligible men.  At sight of the motor, they broke into
+shouts and ragged cheers that would have moved a heart many degrees
+less responsive than the heart of Mark Forsyth.
+
+"Drive slower, man," he said to Keith; and, standing up in the car,
+he waved his glengarry--giving them shout for shout--till he could no
+more.
+
+That vision of him, so standing, with the morning light in his eyes,
+the sun upon his chestnut-red hair and his kilt blown back by the
+wind, remained stamped indelibly upon his mother's brain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+  "Hearts that are as one high heart,
+  Withholding nought from doom or bale,
+  Burningly offered up--to bleed,
+  To bear, to break, but not to fail."
+                              LAURENCE BINYON.
+
+
+The dream of that coveted week at Mark's war station materialised
+about the middle of September.  More: it was a success; a blessed
+memory unspoiled by any jarring note, and it brought the two women
+nearer to each other than they had been yet.
+
+They found Mark, in charge of a double company chiefly armed with
+broom-sticks, handling his Highlanders to some purpose; giving his
+spare hours to revolver practice, with plump German targets in view.
+His Colonel, who lost no time in making friends with Lady Forsyth,
+spoke of him in glowing terms, and gave his women folk every facility
+for seeing the coast defences prepared against the promised invasion.
+They wandered, shivering inwardly, through a maze of genuine
+trenches, heavily sandbagged, that, in the event of a landing, were
+to be held "at all costs."  They inspected cunning entanglements of
+barbed wire on the beach and underground forts that looked more like
+heat bumps on the face of the earth than strong defensive positions;
+and they heard amazing stories of spies, though the Government had
+nominally demolished the system.  They had tea with half a dozen
+jilted officers, on a bare deal table, in an upper room of a house
+that had been shorn of its furniture to accommodate Mark, with two
+fellow subalterns and three hundred men.
+
+Everything conspired to make those few September days an untarnished
+memory.  The tide of retreat had turned.  The miracle had happened
+and the Germans, flung back from the gates of Paris, had been
+brilliantly defeated on the Marne.  India's response to the call of
+her King-Emperor had sent a thrill through the whole kingdom: and
+some impeccable authority--name unknown--reported hundreds of
+Russians at Ostend.  Hopeful souls dreamed again of a swift and
+decisive issue.  But the Great Brain piling up armies in Whitehall
+still pinned his faith on England's "last million men."
+
+In fact, there was only one flaw in the week of their content; it
+passed too soon.  Then the price must be paid in the renewed wrench
+of parting; and for the first time Lady Forsyth saw tears in Bel's
+eyes.
+
+Of course they must come again, Mark assured them at the last.  "The
+C.O. has fallen in love with Mums!  He'd be heartbroken if I didn't
+give him another chance.  And he's a useful chap to please.  So that
+settles it!"
+
+
+But towards the end of September, before there was time even to think
+of another chance, Mark had his orders.  A decimated battalion was
+clamouring for reinforcements; and a message flashed to Wynchcombe
+Friars that he would be home next day on forty-eight hours leave,
+picking up Bel in town.
+
+That blunt announcement drove the blood from Lady Forsyth's face.
+Sheila was back with her again; and Keith had just returned from a
+week's absence on business connected with the Forsyth-Macnair Car.
+
+"He's got his wish," was all she said: and went quickly out of the
+room.
+
+Next morning they arrived--the two of them; Mark rather defiantly
+cheerful, Bel more than a little subdued.  Lady Forsyth had never
+liked the girl better than in those two days.
+
+To the women it seemed hard that so many of his precious hours at
+home must be squandered on business.  But Mark had to face the fact
+that he might never return; and to make his dispositions accordingly.
+It had always been his wish to emulate his father and be practically
+his own land-agent.  But four years of minority and the long absence
+in Europe had obliged him to employ a trustworthy man of experience:
+and he was thankful for it now.  George Russell, happily well over
+forty, had proved as capable as he was devoted: which is saying a
+good deal for his capacity.  He possessed, moreover, a shrewder
+business head than either mother or son: and, on occasion, to Mark's
+huge delight, he would assume a tenderly protective attitude, as of
+one whose mission in life was to save them from themselves.
+
+In the matter of Belgian refugees, for instance, he regretted to
+report that Lady Forsyth was not sufficiently discriminating.  They
+were proving, as was natural, "a very mixed lot," and Russell had a
+positive flair for the wrong sort.  It was not fair on Sir Mark to
+crowd up his cottages with "foreign riff-raff": the deserving would
+make a quite sufficient drain on his limited resources.  The good
+fellow learnt with unconcealed relief that Lady Forsyth would soon be
+going to Boulogne with Miss Melrose and that he would be left
+practically in charge of everything.  They had decided to lend the
+house to Sir Richard's two sisters chiefly with a view to keeping it
+available for hospitality to officers, wounded or otherwise.  The
+little colony of arts and crafts had dwindled considerably: but the
+workshops were not to be altogether closed down.  Lady Forsyth was
+anxious to encourage refugee lace-makers, Belgian and French.
+
+Mark himself was thankful for business details that relieved the
+underlying strain.  But he refused on this occasion to bid any
+official "Good-byes."  He had taken leave of his people when he
+joined the army.  This final wrench was his own most private and
+personal affair as they would doubtless understand.
+
+Tea on the terrace was a creditably cheerful meal; and it was not
+till near dinner-time that Mark managed to slip away by himself for
+an hour of quiet communing with the land he loved--the woods, the
+river, and the lordly ruins that, for him, were written all over with
+the inner history of his own brief twenty-seven years.  Bel had asked
+him more than once how he could bear to leave it all: and to-night,
+as he saw the red sun tangled among his pine tops, that question so
+shook his fortitude that he challenged it with another.  Could he
+bear to think of German troops defiling the fair and stately face of
+it, terrorising with torture and outrage, the men and women whose
+welfare was his main concern in life?  Confronted with that
+challenge, the coward question fled ashamed.
+
+After dinner he had half an hour's talk with Sheila, into whose hands
+he solemnly commended his more mercurial mother.  "She's a jewel of
+price," he added frankly, "but in certain moods, she takes some
+managing.  And on the whole you're better at it than old Keith.
+Don't let her crock up from the strain of it all.  And write to me.
+Promise."
+
+She promised--and his mind felt more at rest.
+
+Later on he took Bel out on to the terrace, where they paced up and
+down in the starlight, talking fitfully.  Time was too short for all
+they had to say: and for that very reason they could not say one half
+of it.  Interludes of silence increased.  At last came one so
+prolonged that, by a mutual impulse, they came to a standstill, near
+a low stone bench, confronting each other and the inexorable fact.
+
+"Oh Mark--to-morrow!" Bel breathed unsteadily, her dim face close to
+his.  "It seems impossible."
+
+For answer he took hold of her: and sitting down, gathered her on to
+his knees.  Then, amazed, he heard her whisper at his ear:
+"Darling--I'm horribly afraid.  I keep feeling--I shall never get you
+back."
+
+It was spoken at last, the fear of perpetual parting that knocked at
+both their hearts.  But the man knew that spectre must be ignored.
+"I'll come back with any luck, my Bel," he said, kissing her, "to
+claim you for good, and worry your life out!  I vote we marry the
+first leave I get."
+
+He passed his hand slowly down her bare arm.  "Darling, you're cold,"
+he said.  "There's a dew and a half falling.  Come in at once.  Are
+we downhearted?--No!"
+
+The light of the hall showed her on the verge of tears.  But she
+pulled herself together and he dismissed her with a blessing that
+meant more to him than to her.
+
+In the drawing-room he found Keith alone, with a solitary electric
+light switched on, smoking by the open window; a privilege Helen
+permitted him for the sake of his company.
+
+"Hullo!  Gone--both of 'em?" Mark asked in surprise.
+
+"Yes.  I ordered them off.  They looked strained and tired.  Couldn't
+read.  Couldn't talk.  Your mother has some letters to write, I
+think.  She left word--would you look in?"
+
+"Bless her, she takes things beastly hard."
+
+"She does," Keith assented briefly: and Mark proceeded to fill his
+pipe.
+
+During the process Keith watched him, appraising his straight, clean
+manhood and cursing the devilish nature of modern war.
+
+Presently, when Mark had finished with his pipe, he spoke.
+
+"Keith, old chap, on the strength of peculiar circumstances and the
+general uncertainty of things, I'm going to make an infernally
+impertinent remark.  To begin with, Mother's most distractingly on my
+mind.  I've fixed up most things, with a view to--possible
+contingencies.  But I don't seem able to fix up her.  If I'm knocked
+out she's simply done for.  Not even this precious work of hers for
+consolation.  It all goes to Uncle Everard who'll make an end of our
+colony straight away.  She'll lose everything at a stroke, except
+Inveraig.  And she--alone there----!"
+
+He set his teeth; and Keith passed a long thin hand across his eyes.
+"That's the tragedy of it," he said; adding, with forced lightness,
+"Where does the impertinence come in?"
+
+"It's jolly well coming in now.  Don't bite my head off.  Truth is
+I'm not stone-blind; and just lately--I've been wondering ... why the
+deuce don't you make a match of it?  You and Mums!"
+
+Macnair started, and his face looked rather a queer colour in the dim
+light.
+
+"Great heavens, Mark!  Talk of explosives!"
+
+For the moment he could get no further; and Mark was puzzled.  "You
+mean--it's never occurred to you?"
+
+"I mean nothing of the sort."
+
+"Then I bet you _do_ want to bite my head off----"
+
+"I'm not ... so sure," he said slowly.  His voice was more natural
+now.  "I always like your sledge-hammer directness.  At the same
+time--"  He rose and paced the length of the room revolving that
+amazing proposition.
+
+"If I thought there was a ghost of a chance," Mark persisted, as
+Keith turned in his stride, "it would take a ton weight off my mind."
+
+"Not to mention mine," Keith answered smiling; and when he reached
+the window he put a hand on Mark's shoulder.  "As it seems a case of
+plain speaking to-night, I may as well admit the truth.  She's been
+the star of my life for fifteen years--and I'd give all I possess to
+marry her."
+
+Mark's eyebrows went up.
+
+"And she ten years a widow!  Why not have a shot at it, old chap, and
+make this Boulogne trip a sort of war honeymoon----"
+
+"My dear boy!  The pace you young fellows travel!  And you ignore ...
+there's Helen herself to be reckoned with----"
+
+For the first time in his life Mark saw the blood mount into Keith's
+face and heard him hesitate over his mother's name;--phenomena that
+checked his fluency a little but rather increased his zeal.
+
+"Well, if you don't have a try," he said, "hanged if the C.O. won't
+forestall you.  He's dead smitten.  Two lovers at fifty--she ought to
+be ashamed of herself!"
+
+But Keith seemed no way perturbed by the possibility of a rival.
+
+"_If_ she ever marries again," he said quietly, "it will be myself.
+But, Mark, is it possible you've never realised that, for her, your
+father is still as much alive as when he walked this earth.  There's
+a modest percentage of human beings so made, and a good few of them
+are Scots.  For them there is actually neither death, nor separation.
+I believe your father still bars my way, as much as he did when--I
+first loved her.  Of course ... I may exaggerate!"
+
+"Hope you do!"  Mark was deeply moved.  "She doesn't often speak of
+him to me."
+
+"Nor to me.  But--when she does, it's quite clear."
+
+"'M.  Rough luck!  All the same, if the worst happens, give me your
+word you'll have a try ... for her sake and mine as well as your own.
+No one would dream there's eight years between you."
+
+Keith simply held out his hand and Mark's closed on it hard.  The
+good understanding that had always existed between them was complete.
+
+Mark found his mother writing letters in bed.  He had accused her
+more than once of writing them in her bath.  She looked strained and
+tired, as Keith said; but in her blue dressing-jacket with hair
+demurely parted and a thick plait over her shoulder, she appeared
+younger, if anything, than the man he had left downstairs.
+
+"Incurable woman!" he said lightly.  "Who's your victim this time?"
+
+She told him; and while she read out snatches of her letter,
+Mark--watching her with new eyes--wondered, had she the least
+inkling?  Would a word from him be of any service to Keith?
+
+Curiosity impelled him to talk of the Boulogne trip, to enlarge on
+his confidence in Keith, and even to touch on the unconventional
+character of the whole plan.  Neither in look nor tone could he
+detect a glimmer of after-thought or shadow of self-consciousness.
+The causes of her satisfaction were clear as daylight: longing to be
+in the same country as himself: candid pleasure in Keith's and
+Sheila's company and her innate love of getting off the beaten track.
+
+"It's just one of the many beautiful things that a genuine,
+understanding friendship makes possible," she concluded, stamping and
+sealing her letter: and Mark began to feel rather sorry for Keith.
+But he wisely refrained from any hint of his own knowledge.  It would
+probably do no good and would certainly spoil her pleasure in going.
+
+Instead, he commandeered her writing board, an act of tyranny that
+would normally have involved a fight.  Her unnatural meekness hurt
+him more sharply than any words of love, could she have brought
+herself to speak them.  When he came back to the bed, she indicated a
+little pile of Active Service Compendiums and a pocket Red-letter
+Testament on the table beside her.  She had already given him his
+wrist watch and a silver flask.
+
+"That _from_ me," she said touching the Book, "and those _for_ me.  I
+shall be hungry for news remember and out of touch with Bel, who will
+get it all."
+
+"Not quite all--faithless and unbelieving!" he answered echoing her
+lightness, then he added with decision.  "You're not coming up to
+town, Mums; not even to the station--understand?  It'll be bad enough
+having Bel.  But she's cooler all through.  No matter how brave you
+are, I can always feel you quivering inside.  And I couldn't stand
+it.  Nor could you."
+
+She shook her head.  "It was only--a temptation.  Not to miss----"
+
+A spasm crossed her face and he went down on his knees beside her.
+
+"Darling, if we are going to make fools of ourselves," he said
+huskily.  "I'd better be off.  It's near midnight.  Time you were
+asleep."  No answer; and he spoke still lower.  "Give me your
+blessing, Mums--like when I went to school."
+
+Still without speaking she laid her hands on his bowed head; and from
+his heart he echoed her passionate silent plea for his safe return.
+
+Then he stood up and kissed her good night----
+
+For sheer misery and discomfort nothing could exceed the actual hour
+or two before departure.  Bel could be with him in his room while he
+"completed his mobilisation."  The rest could only hang about
+aimlessly, making futile talk or inventing futile occupations to keep
+thought at bay.  In the background, several maids and a grey-haired
+butler hovered fitfully; and Bobs, a picture of abject misery, lay
+awaiting his master at the foot of the stairs.
+
+He came at last, in a violent hurry, shouting an order to Keith and
+springing clean over the prostrate Bobs.
+
+Bel followed more leisurely; flushed a little, but controlled.  Then
+the hovering servants came forward and Helen slipped quietly into her
+husband's study.
+
+There, at last, Mark came to her--followed closely by a tailless Bobs.
+
+Somehow she contrived to smile.  Then his arms were round her,
+crushing her to him.
+
+"God bless you," he whispered.  "Don't fret.  It's going to be all
+right.  And--if it isn't ... it'll _still_ be all right."
+
+Then he kissed her again and let her go.
+
+From the threshold he waved to her, smiling resolutely, though tears
+stood in his eyes.  She waved back to him.  The door shut between
+them.  He was gone.
+
+As she stood motionless, fighting back her grief, she was startled by
+that sharp, familiar pang in the region of her heart: and a momentary
+darkness as if a raven's wing had brushed across her eyes.  She
+shivered and kneeled hastily down to comfort the desolate Bobs, while
+her tears fell, unchecked now, upon his rough brown head.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+"Here is the hard paradox: war ... truly devilish, bestial, senseless
+thing, produces in masses--as peace distinctly does not produce
+them--brothers and sisters to Christ."--G. B. DAWAR.
+
+
+Wynchcombe Friars without Mark was no place to tarry in; but there
+seemed no end to the delays; and Keith turned even these to good
+account by teaching Sheila to drive the Forsyth-Macnair car.  Two
+drivers with one orderly would get through twice the work.
+
+It was near the middle of October when, at last, they found
+themselves speeding towards Folkestone.  Keith, who had laid aside
+philosophy "for the duration of the war," delighted in his own small
+ark of salvation as a Captain delights in his ship.  From "stem to
+stern" she was as perfect as skill and money could make her; fitted
+up with four stretchers and bedding; crammed to the limit of her
+capacity with first aid appliances and a minimum of luggage.
+
+Here and there autumn had laid a fiery finger on the woods.  Birches
+and elms were tipped with gold.  Otherwise the October sun riding in
+a cloudless heaven suggested high summer.  Mark had been gone nearly
+two weeks.  Two brief cheerful letters assured his mother he was
+alive and well.  Till she could see him again, those simple facts
+were all that vitally concerned herself; though pessimists prophesied
+invasion by Zeppelin and transport; and away over there--unseen, yet
+acutely felt--Belgium continued her heroic stand against the
+all-devouring, all-defiling German Army.
+
+The fall of Antwerp, pronounced impregnable, had resounded through
+Europe like the knell of doom.  For a time, even the bravest were
+shaken with dismay and the stream of refugees increased daily.  The
+streets of Folkestone overflowed with that pitiful flotsam of wrecked
+cities.  Some wept; some cursed; some prayed; but the prevailing
+expression was a terrible stunned indifference, as though shock on
+shock had hammered them into automata that could move and eat and
+sleep, but could no longer feel.
+
+In Boulogne--when they reached it--the flotsam of wrecked battalions
+was more in evidence.  Things were still primitive here as regards
+organisation: but already the place was an English colony.  The
+British Red Cross Society was beginning to make things move and
+owners of private cars were doing splendid service.  To these were
+now added the unrelated trio from Wynchcombe Friars.  But their first
+objective was Rouen, where a young Stuart nephew lay badly wounded,
+craving for the sight of a face from home.  His invalid mother could
+not get to him; so Lady Forsyth went in her stead, only to find on
+arrival that the boy had been dead an hour.  For the sake of that
+faraway mother she asked to see him, though privately she dreaded the
+ordeal.  She was aware, suddenly, of a very unheroic shrinking from
+close contact with the awful actualities of war.  But that shrinking
+in no way affected her zeal for the work in hand.
+
+News that a train-load of casualties was expected that evening sent
+them full speed to the station; but it was dusk when they arrived to
+find the process of unloading begun.  At the entrance, a group of Red
+Cross officials stood talking and laughing, hardened by habit to the
+painful scene.  As the car drew up they crowded round, admiring it
+and questioning Macnair, while tragic burdens were being carried past
+them in the half light.
+
+Helen, too overwrought to make allowances, wondered how Keith had the
+patience to answer them.
+
+Presently, her attention was caught by a number of black shadows,
+like wheelbarrows abnormally large and high.
+
+"What are those?" she asked a porter, and discovered that they were
+severely wounded men on wheeled stretchers either too brave or too
+exhausted to utter a sound of complaint.
+
+At that she could restrain herself no longer.
+
+"Keith," she exclaimed, flagrantly interrupting a Medical Authority
+with a passion for cars.  "Why are those unfortunate men kept hanging
+about in this noisy place?  Can't we get four of them away?"
+
+But Medical Authority checked her impatience in a tone of mild
+reproof.
+
+"Those fellows are all right where they are, Lady Forsyth," he said.
+"They're not fit to be moved off their stretchers.  So we're waiting
+for the trams.  If you like to back into the station, you may pick up
+some milder cases who'll be glad of a lift."
+
+They backed in accordingly and picked up two maimed men and a
+remarkably cheerful subaltern with his left arm in a sling and a
+bandage across one eye.  As they passed out, Keith offered to return
+for another load; and to Helen's disgust, the offer was politely
+declined.
+
+By the time they reached the field hospital--a collection of
+marquees, fitted up with electric light--it was nearly ten o'clock.
+
+"Quite early; but we don't seem to be _wanted_; so I suppose we must
+go to bed," Helen remarked with doleful emphasis, as they re-settled
+the car.  "I don't know what you think about it, Keith.  _I_ feel
+distinctly snubbed.  Four out of three hundred!  What's that?"
+
+"A beginning--and no bad one!" Keith answered placidly, filling his
+pipe.  "Fanshawe says if we report ourselves at Boulogne we shall get
+all the work we want.  There's heavy fighting on the north.  A big
+battle developing for Ypres and Calais."
+
+To Boulogne they returned accordingly: and had no cause this time to
+feel either snubbed or superfluous.  There was still a famine of cars
+at the Base and the wounded were arriving in thousands: their bodies
+mangled and mutilated; their spirits, in the main, unquenched.
+
+Macnair and his party drove up to their Hotel at noon: and their
+greeting from the Red Cross Authority was very much to the point.
+
+"All available cars wanted immediately at the Gare Maritime.  Better
+get some lunch first."
+
+That lunch was of the briefest.  Keith dumped their luggage in the
+hall without so much as asking if there were rooms to be had.  Helen
+did not even open the coveted letter from Mark, till they were back
+in the motor, speeding towards the bare unsheltered Gare, where
+impromptu and comfortless hospital trains debouched their tragic
+loads.  Mercifully the sun of that miraculous autumn still shone
+unclouded; and, by the time autumn gave place to the wettest winter
+in decades, better arrangements had been made.
+
+All that afternoon they worked, unceasingly, and late into the night.
+Back and forth, back and forth between station and hospital; jolting
+inevitably over railway lines, and a strip of merciless cobble
+pavement that, for men with shattered limbs, hurriedly dressed,
+involved several minutes of excruciating agony.
+
+"Keith, couldn't they possibly take up that cruel bit of pave?" Helen
+pleaded after their seventh journey with three men at death's door.
+"Even a raw road would be better than those stones."
+
+"I'll move heaven and earth to get it improved," he assured her,
+little guessing that he had pledged himself to a labour of Hercules.
+
+
+By the time they could take breath and think about finding beds, they
+were all dead weary, sustained only by the knowledge that they had
+given their mite of service to the utmost of their power.  In Mark's
+letter, which Helen had scarcely found time to read, there was a
+sentence on this head that had haunted her brain throughout those
+strenuous hours.
+
+"Oh Mums, if only the good casual folk at home could be made to see
+even the half of what we see in the way of wanton destruction, and
+calculated brutality, wherever the gentle German has left his trail,
+they'd possibly begin to realise the powers of evil we're up against
+in this war and things in general would march to a different tune.
+But they can't see.  That's the trouble.  And hearing about such
+things isn't the same at all.  If we're ever going to win through
+hell to human conditions again it won't be merely by signing cheques
+and making speeches, but by the individual personal service of every
+man and woman in whatever capacity; and I'm proud to feel you three
+are giving it like Trojans.  God bless you all!"
+
+She stood gleaning a few more scraps under an electric light, when
+Keith came up to say he had secured a room for her and Sheila; and a
+friendly Irish doctor had offered him a bed in his hospital train.
+
+"I'm in great luck with my two assistants," he added smiling down at
+her eager, tired face.  "Sheila betters my expectation, which is
+saying a good deal.  Her self-possession to-day astonished me.  She'd
+have the nerve for advance ambulance work in the firing line, I do
+believe.  But I'm glad we've got her safe here."
+
+He glanced towards her where she sat at a writing-table scribbling a
+hurried letter to Mark in praise of their mutually beloved Mums.
+Then he went up and touched her shoulder.
+
+"Good night, Sheila," he said.  "Get to bed sharp, both of you.  I'll
+call for you to-morrow."
+
+"We'll be ready early," she answered looking up at him; and he
+discovered, to his surprise, that her eyes were swimming in tears.
+
+
+There was a certain monotony about the days of unremitting work that
+followed; a monotony tinged with its own peculiar high lights and
+shadows; with beauty and terror, fortitude and anguish, the incoming
+and outgoing pulse-beat of life at the Base.  Scarcely a day passed
+without some minor incident, some flash of human revelation that
+neither Keith nor his orderlies would forget while they lived.
+
+For Helen--with every nerve responsive to the suffering around
+them--the strain of it all proved no light matter; yet, in retrospect
+she counted those terrible days as among the richest experiences of
+her life.
+
+To her it was distracting that wounded men should suffer additional
+miseries from the fact that even in two and a half months of war it
+had been impossible to cope with all the complex needs of the
+situation.  Hospitals were few and quite inadequate.  The magnificent
+ambulance trains of later days were still in the workshops at home;
+while untiring men on the spot did the best they could with the high,
+comfortless passenger coaches of France.  Even the more luxurious
+sleeping carriages were too cramped for the ingress and egress of
+badly wounded men: and when, at last, these were landed, like so many
+bales of goods, on the unsheltered platform of the Gare, shortage of
+ambulance cars and trained stretcher-bearers added the finishing
+touch to their nightmare journey.  But soon after Keith's arrival the
+zeal and organisation of the British Red Cross began to make
+themselves felt, in this respect as in others.  Every ambulance that
+could be raised in London was rushed across to Boulogne; till in a
+few days there were eighty of one kind or another plying between
+train and hospital and ship.
+
+For all that, there was still need of superhuman exertion to cope,
+even inadequately with the terrible stream of wounded; the back wash
+as it were, from the Homeric struggle round Ypres.  In that region,
+the Belgians were making their last desperate stand, and war-worn
+British Divisions,--haggard, sleepless, cruelly depleted--were still
+miraculously holding their own against Army Corps on Army Corps of
+fresh German troops heartened by an overwhelming superiority in guns
+and shells.  There--during those awful days--whole battalions of the
+finest troops on earth practically ceased to exist; and thence came
+the main influx of comfortless, over-crowded trains.
+
+Steadily the tale of wounded swelled, till it reached an average of
+two thousand a day.  And what were eighty cars among so many?  Little
+better than the five loaves and two small fishes in Galilee: and here
+was no hope of miraculous intervention.  The outstanding miracle of
+that golden October--when England neither knew her peril nor the full
+cost of her salvation--was the superhuman fortitude of those that
+were broken on the wheel and the untiring energy of those who served
+them in the teeth of baffling conditions.
+
+Day after day the open platform was thronged with men on stretchers
+in all stages of mental and bodily collapse; British, Indian, French,
+Belgian, German--brothers all, for the moment, in suffering if in
+nothing else.  Some stared wildly and talked nonsense; some were
+apathetic; some incurably cheerful; though often their wounds had not
+been dressed for days.
+
+The lack of trained stretcher-bearers was a serious difficulty till
+St. John's Ambulance Society came to the rescue.  Porters, willing
+but unskilful, did what they could.  Keith himself, and others like
+him, helped to carry scores of men.  From early morning till near
+midnight the cars of rescue ran to and fro; but in spite of every
+effort there were unavoidable delays.  Men died there on the
+stretchers, or in draughty cars, while red-tape regulations kept them
+waiting outside hospitals and ships.  And that cruel strip of pavé
+remained unsmoothed, though Keith had pressed the point with
+unauthorised persistence.  And Helen cursed--so far as her ladyhood
+permitted--every time they crossed it with patients in the last
+extremity.
+
+The unceasing rush of work left small leisure for nightmares or even
+for anxiety; but the strain and pain of it was taxing her nerves to
+breaking-point.  Always, as they drew near the familiar crowded
+station, there sprang the inevitable question: "Will it be Mark this
+time?"  But though the passing days brought many from his regiment,
+Mark was not found among them.
+
+As for Sheila, her sensitive spirit felt the test more acutely than
+either of the elders, who kept watchful eyes on her, were allowed to
+suspect.  Only by clinging desperately to her childhood's code of
+courage could she save herself, at times, from the ignominy of
+collapse.  It was sustaining, too, to feel that Keith trusted her,
+that Helen relied on her; and Mark's occasional letters--full of a
+brotherly tenderness that showed little in his speech--made it seem
+possible to win through anything without flinching visibly.  The fact
+that she could face this inferno of pain and death and mental anguish
+without a sense of bitterness or rebellion was more of an asset than
+she knew.  It was, in fact, the keystone of her character, the secret
+of her spiritual poise.  For to accept, actively to accept, spells
+capacity to transcend; but that she had still to discover.
+
+They had little time, any of them, for abstract or personal thought.
+The war, and its pressing demands on them constituted their life.
+Keith had secured a small private sitting-room, where they could
+enjoy an occasional evening of quiet and rest.  But as work was
+seldom over till near eleven, such oases were rare indeed.  At times
+their heads felt stunned with the eternal rattling to and fro, their
+hearts numbed by contact with the awful harvest of a modern
+battlefield.  But on the whole they loved their work, and would not
+have been otherwhere for a kingdom.
+
+They grew skilled in the art of talking the men's minds away from
+their sufferings: and Sheila--"Mouse" though she was--showed so
+notable a gift for this form of spiritual healing, that Lady Forsyth
+finally christened her "Queen of the Poor Things."  Some
+mother-quality in her touch and tone seemed to go straight to their
+hearts.  Men who left the station groaning and clenching their teeth,
+to keep the curses back, would surprisingly soon be conjured into
+recounting their adventures, or better still, talking of wives and
+children at home.
+
+Keith himself confessed that he had never properly appreciated the
+British Tommy till he carried him wounded; and Helen lost her heart a
+dozen times over.  More than once when they chanced upon men
+shattered and bandaged past human recognition, she came very near
+losing her head: but only once did she disgrace herself by fainting
+outright.
+
+On that occasion, Keith carried her straight back to their Hotel,
+laid her on the sofa and stayed by her till she was sufficiently
+recovered to feel very much ashamed of herself.
+
+"Promise I won't do it again," she assured him as he stood leaning
+over her.
+
+"No, that you certainly won't," he said sternly.  "If ever you do, I
+shall pack you straight off home.  To-night, for a punishment, you'll
+go early to bed.  Sheila will be quite safe with me."
+
+Argument and rebellion were useless.  Moreover, she was honestly
+exhausted; and before ten o'clock she was sound asleep.
+
+But even weariness could not break the habit of short rest; and by
+one of the morning she was amazingly wide awake.
+
+Some distant sound had roused her, and now it drew nearer:--footsteps
+and voices; men cheering and singing of "La Gloire" and "La Mort."
+Nearer still they came, tramping along the pavement, till they were
+almost under her open window.
+
+Then she was aware of a discordant note in that gallant chorus.  One
+voice, raised in terror and remonstrance, was trying to dominate
+those other voices that were obviously shouting it down.
+
+"J'ai peur!  Mon Dieu, camarades, j'ai peur!"
+
+The words reached her distinctly now.  But the rest, unheeding, sang
+louder than ever of "la mort" and "la gloire."
+
+Possibly they were sorry for him.  The coward is the unhappiest of
+men.  Yet he too being "enfant de la patrie" must go, even as others
+went: and Helen Forsyth, hearing him go, found the tears streaming
+down her face--not for the coercion of one reluctant citizen, but for
+the unending horror and misery of it all: the fear and the anguish
+and the calculated cruelty that were so infinitely worse than death.
+
+Sheila, sleeping the profound sleep of healthily exhausted youth,
+stirred not an eyelash even when the noise was at its height.  But,
+for Helen, that pitiful interlude had put an end to rest; had opened
+the door to nightmare memories and her own most private fears.
+
+Since the long letter from Mark, that had greeted her on arrival,
+there had been one barren field postcard: and even that was ten days
+old.
+
+And away there, in the trenches, the struggle seemed to wax fiercer
+every hour....
+
+The blank parallelogram of her window gleamed pale grey before, in
+spite of herself, she fell asleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+  "They stand to be her sacrifice,
+  The sons this Mother flings like dice,
+  To face the odds and brave the Fates...."
+                                GEORGE MEREDITH.
+
+
+The strain of Mark's sudden silence told increasingly upon the three
+of them.  It was tacitly assumed that postal arrangements were
+disorganised.  Each hoped that the others believed in that consoling
+fiction; but privately, they were sceptics all.
+
+Helen continued to post his paper and her own thick envelope every
+other day in the hope that he was still to be found somewhere in the
+terrible maze of trenches that drew England's best and bravest as a
+magnet draws steel.
+
+Meantime, they were thankful for unremitting work; for the constant
+movement and interest of life at the Base.  Young officers, eager for
+action, might be bored to extinction by a few weeks in camp or in one
+of the crowded hotels; but an observer, blessed with humour and a
+large love of human nature, could not fail to find at every turn food
+for thought, for laughter and for tears.
+
+War is neither all horror, nor all heroism, or it could not be waged
+by flesh and blood.  Soldiers who can die like gods, or fight as the
+beasts that perish, are, in the intervals, men of like passions with
+their kind.  And genuine soldiers were scarce among those who now
+poured into Boulogne, to fill the gaps in that dangerously thin line
+round Ypres: Territorials and schoolmasters, clergymen and clerks,
+lords of commerce and lords of the land; dissimilar in almost every
+essential, yet welded together by one common resolve, one common
+faith:--a crusade indeed!
+
+And the manifold needs of a host undreamed of by the wildest,
+wickedest "militarists," demanded the existence of that other army
+chiefly congregated at the Base;--doctors, nurses, chaplains,
+ambulance folk, owners of private cars, and those sorrowful birds of
+passage--relations of dying or dangerously wounded men.  On the
+quays, in streets and hotels they thronged, those incongruous
+fragments of the world's greatest drama; and Lady Forsyth never tired
+of watching them or listening to their snatches of talk.  Neither
+weariness, nor nightmare visions, nor anxiety, even, could blunt the
+edge of her keen interest in the human panorama.
+
+"Oh, Sheila, my lamb," she exclaimed one evening after a day of very
+varied emotions, "aren't people--all sorts and kinds of
+them--passionately interesting?  Even when I'm laid on the uttermost
+shelf, I shall still be always peeping over the edge!"
+
+"And you'll always find me peeping up at you!" the girl answered,
+smiling at the quaint conceit.  "It's simply wonderful, being with
+you--through all this!"
+
+
+A temporary lull in the stream of wounded was followed, too soon, by
+a renewed rush of hospital trains filled to overflowing; the harvest
+of a fresh German onslaught.  But by this time there were more cars
+and more stretcher-bearers.  Ambulance trains, splendidly equipped,
+were being hurried out from England; and the customs sheds at the
+station had become a great shelter, roughly partitioned into
+dressing-stations for those who had need of immediate care.  From
+this seed of voluntary effort there sprung up, in time, a big
+stationary hospital, but by then the Forsyth-Macnair car was needed
+elsewhere.
+
+Meantime, in every effort to minimise the sufferings of the men he
+served, Keith was actively to the fore.  He even talked of running a
+second car.  Helen herself was amazed at his energy and
+versatility--he whom she had hitherto regarded as a man wedded
+entirely to books and thought.  But among all the surprises of a war
+rich in surprise, good and evil, were none more remarkable than such
+unlooked-for revelations of human capacity and character.
+
+Still no sign of Mark, though there were many discoveries, sad and
+glad, on that ever-crowded platform: and one morning, on a day they
+did not soon forget, Sheila made a find on her own account that
+concerned them all more nearly than they knew.
+
+It was a brilliant morning.  Scarcely a cloud in the sky or a ripple
+on the sea; and they reached the station early to find a train had
+arrived before daylight.  Stretcher cases had been left undisturbed;
+but those who could walk were strolling or limping up and down in the
+sun.  Others, more seriously damaged, lay about in groups on the
+ground or propped against bales of goods; great gaunt Highlanders,
+Gunners and Guardsmen, Indians and Canadians--their coats, boots, and
+puttees caked with the mud of Flanders; heads and limbs swathed in
+bandages bright with blood; rough jokes on their lips; a ready gleam
+of laughter in their tired eyes.  And the sun beat down upon them
+all; and the last of the flies gave them no peace.
+
+It was a sight to contract the heart in pity and to lift it in pride
+of common human manhood that could so smilingly suffer and endure.
+
+There must have been seven hundred of them, all told.  To dress their
+wounds and remove them would be an arduous day's work; and only by
+very special efforts could they be fed.  Red Cross and V.A.D. ladies
+hurried to and fro with food and hot drinks and words of welcome,
+hardly less acceptable.
+
+Keith went off, at once, to help with the stretchers; and for a space
+the three were separated.  Helen promptly attached herself to a
+Highlander whose face was obliterated in bandages, save for his mouth
+and one eye: and very soon Sheila came hurrying up to them, two spots
+of colour in her pale cheeks.
+
+"Mums, _who_ d'you think I've found?--No, not Mark," she added
+quickly.  "It's my very 'poor thing,' Mr. Seldon, of all people on
+earth.  I knew he'd taken up motor cycling keenly; but I didn't dream
+he'd volunteer for despatch riding.  Just shows you can never label
+people off-hand.  It seems he had furlough due and wanted to be
+useful; so he's been running to and fro, in this awful fighting, and
+had his right leg smashed for a reward.  When your Kiltie's had his
+breakfast, do come and be introduced."
+
+The Kiltie's one eye beamed at the familiar allusion from so engaging
+a morsel of girlhood; and he nearly choked himself in a gallant
+effort to empty his steaming cup of coffee at a gulp.  But Sheila
+noticed nothing.  She was engrossed in her regenerate "poor thing":
+rather more so than Lady Forsyth quite approved.
+
+She, herself, found him not unattractive; dark as a gypsy, with
+thoughtful eyes that followed Sheila wherever she moved.
+
+"That _you_ should have found me!  The most amazing luck!" he kept
+repeating, at intervals, apparently taking it for granted that Lady
+Forsyth understood the situation.
+
+And, indeed, Helen caught herself wondering was it out of pure
+consideration for him that the girl chiefly confined her
+ministrations to men in his neighbourhood?  She even came back to ask
+for details of the culminating adventure that had possibly cost him a
+leg.
+
+"There's just a shred of hope they may save it," he added
+philosophically.  "And I'm hanging on to that.  Anyway it's not
+likely now, I'd be quarrelling with my fate!  I told you I was coming
+over.  Didn't you get my letter?"
+
+"No.  It'll probably follow me here.  Now--I mustn't stay talking.
+Shall I ask Mr. Macnair to get you for our car?"
+
+"Do; angel of mercy!"
+
+Snatches, in this vein, Helen overheard as she came and went upon her
+own errands and her swift brain sprang half-way to meet possible
+developments not entirely to her liking.  Still--she was sorry for
+the man and glad when Keith secured him as a passenger.
+
+They left him finally at the hospital where Mona was beginning to
+earn distinction; and Sheila promised to look him up later.  Then
+back they rattled again to that eternally familiar Gare.
+
+This time they lighted on Maurice Lenox--not wounded, but shivering
+with fever, his nerves all ajar from sleeplessness and shell fire.
+The hope that he might give them news of Mark was soon extinguished.
+Maurice had run across him earlier in the day, and had since heard
+great things of his capacity and courage; but where the regiment was
+at present he had not the ghost of an idea.
+
+Maurice himself was a rather damaged edition of the lively clever boy
+they had known at Inveraig.  He declared that the horrors of war
+"made in Germany" exceeded the wildest cinematographs in his brain.
+He had only been "forward" three times for training purposes; but
+every time "the luck" had been against him.  He thanked his stars he
+had got out of it alive; and had not the remotest desire to go back.
+
+After her talk with him, Helen wilted visibly; and by the end of
+their strenuous morning she looked so white and strained that Keith
+prescribed an afternoon of complete rest.  The station work was too
+urgent for Sheila and himself to cry off altogether; but they would
+come back early and cheer her loneliness.
+
+Helen accepted her fate the more readily because, from the moment of
+waking, her spirit had been shadowed by a too-familiar sensation.
+Some large event was hovering near.  For this reason she felt
+reluctant to leave the Hotel; and when the waiter brought in her
+tea-tray with two envelopes on it, she did not even need to look at
+the writing.  Her instincts--as Mark had once said--were infallible.
+
+The second letter was from his Colonel; but that could wait.
+
+Page on close written page she scanned, while absently sipping her
+tea; till her heart brimmed over afresh with love and pride; and
+gratitude that, in spite of all, she had him still.  She could not
+help contrasting the tone of his letter with the talk of Maurice that
+morning.  No insistence, here, on horrors, or on hell fire; no easy
+optimism, either, as regards the gigantic task in hand.
+
+"Every day makes it clearer," he wrote, "that we've a thundering hard
+job before us and that our line round here is dangerously thin.
+Officers and men are about equally exhausted by the long strain and
+insufficient reliefs; and enemy movements all suggest that they're
+cheerfully reckoning to extinguish us in time for Christmas in Town.
+Bless their innocent hearts!  They've yet to reckon with Tommy's
+talent for hanging on with his back teeth, even when a good few of
+them have been extracted!
+
+"Mums, he's simply a human miracle; and we're all head over ears in
+pride of him, though we don't let on to any great extent.  We've had
+a welcome breather in billets the last three days.  But there are big
+doings on; and I expect we'll soon go forward again.  Look out for a
+field PC and be of good heart till you get one.  'Who dies if England
+lives?'  That's the only sane way to look at it.
+
+"Just had three ripping letters from you and Sheila and Bel.  It does
+a man's heart good, in the midst of all this, to get such delicious
+whiffs of home.  You sound a shade anxious.  But fretting's waste of
+strength, little Mums, and your Highland laddie's going strong.  The
+C.O.'s a mighty man of valour.  Talks of making me Adjutant when
+Collins takes up his staff job; all for love of you, I'll swear!
+And--talking of love, I've one word for your very private ear.  If
+old Keith should suddenly startle you by an offer of marriage, don't
+say 'No' if you can help it.  Mind, I'm not sure if he will.  But
+I've reason to suppose he may.  What matter, after all, the
+difference in years--you that, at fifty, can still behave like a
+child of ten!"
+
+Helen read and re-read those amazing words in a very mixed frame of
+mind.  An offer of marriage--!  Mark's imagination was running away
+with him.  More than once of late she had wondered if Keith cared for
+Sheila.  But herself--!  Impossible.  Undeniably it warmed her heart,
+true lover of love that she was: yet Keith was right.  She could
+still, at times, feel that Other so near her, in spirit, as to make
+the idea of a second husband seem little short of sacrilege.
+
+Dropping Mark's letter in her lap, she covered her face.
+"Richard--Richard!" she whispered, and yielded herself to the vague
+yet intimate sense of his presence, that gradually enfolded her and
+as gradually faded, leaving her doubly alone.
+
+By way of banishing ghosts she opened the Colonel's letter and read,
+with uplifted heart, his sincere and soldierly praise of her son whom
+he hoped very soon to secure for his Adjutant.  The first moment it
+was possible, he added, Mark should have a few days' leave.  No man
+in the battalion had earned a better right to it.  Moreover, in the
+recent fighting, he had shown such conspicuous gallantry that his
+name was to be sent up for a decoration.
+
+Such news made royal atonement for anxiety; and she was still reading
+when there came a knock at the door.
+
+"Entrez!" she said casually, supposing the man had come for her
+tea-things.  Then she found that he was holding a salver towards her;
+and on the salver lay a telegram.
+
+At sight of it all the wheels of her being stopped dead.  Everything
+seemed slipping away from her.  Mechanically, she took the envelope
+and rose to her feet.
+
+The waiter, too often a messenger of sorrow, vanished swiftly: and
+Helen Forsyth stood alone reading, with dazed iteration, the bald
+announcement that the War Office regretted to report her son
+Lieutenant Sir Mark Stuart Forsyth "Wounded and Missing, believed
+killed."
+
+Her immobility was the measure of her anguish; and the shock was the
+greater coming at a moment when his voice had almost sounded in her
+ears.
+
+Still mechanically, she picked up that precious letter and, for the
+first time, looked at the date.  It was a week old.
+
+Life without Mark----!
+
+She pressed a hand across her tearless eyes: and while she stood so,
+the door opened again.  She started violently.  A crazy hope of
+reprieve flashed through her brain.  But it was only Keith.
+
+The paper she held and the look in her eyes enlightened him: and
+before he could master his voice, she had recovered hers.
+
+"Keith--it's _come_!" she cried holding out the telegram.  "God help
+us!"
+
+A sudden faintness overwhelmed her, and she put both hands to her
+head.  Keith saw her sway just perceptibly; and without an instant's
+hesitation he put an arm round her shoulders.
+
+"Helen--my dear," was all he could say, as she leaned limply against
+him, shaken with sharp, tearless sobs.
+
+Once, in despair at the sheer impotence of speech, he laid his hand
+on her head; a moment--no more.  Then very gently he led her to the
+sofa, and she lay there, her rebel spirit broken by this last and
+cruelest blow.
+
+He picked up the telegram; re-read it, and put it on the mantelpiece.
+Its work was not yet done.  The news would hit Sheila hard.  And Miss
+Alison.  Had Helen thought of that?
+
+She was thinking of it now.
+
+"Keith," she sat upright, her eyes tearless still.  "I've just
+remembered--poor Bel!  Shall we wire or write?"
+
+"A letter would be more merciful," he said.
+
+"Very well.  I don't know how to write it.  But I'll try."  She sat
+silent, gazing at a photograph of Mark in uniform.  Then: "Keith--he
+_is alive_.  I am sure of it," she said slowly in a voice of
+impressive quietness and conviction.  "While I was lying there
+something--Someone told me.  If he were not, he would have come to
+me, as Derek came.  With all three of them, I had the warning.  So,
+unless he does come, I shall cling to my conviction."
+
+"Yes:--cling to it," he said.  "You've always seen true.  Meantime,
+I'll take the car to the Front and not cease from searching, till I
+find him or some trace of him.  You two must go home at once."
+
+"_Home_--?" She shivered.
+
+"Have faith--and patience," he said gently.  "Throw all your energy
+into some sort of work less painful than the work here."
+
+"But Sheila will hate leaving it.  Her whole heart is given to the
+wounded."
+
+"A very large part of it is given to you.  And now--you are one of
+them; one of the wounded in spirit, whose names appear in no casualty
+lists."
+
+At last, to his relief, he saw tears in her eyes.  She brushed them
+away and rose to her feet.
+
+"I must try and write to Bel.  And oh--there were letters from him
+and the Colonel.  You must read them----"
+
+Suddenly she remembered--and went hot all over at thought of how he
+had held her while she was immersed in grief.  Dexterously
+abstracting Mark's last sheet, she handed him the rest and went back
+to the escritoire.
+
+For a while Keith sat watching her, love and pain and pity contending
+in his heart.  Then he opened the letters.  It was the first time she
+had given him one of Mark's to read.
+
+Hers to Bel scarcely filled a sheet.  But it took a long time to
+write; and before it was finished, Sheila came in, visibly refreshed
+by an hour's talk with Mona and Seldon, who was not to lose his leg.
+
+Hearing her step, Lady Forsyth put down her pen and covered her face.
+
+Keith, feeling like an executioner, again took up the telegram that
+was propped against a vase; and involuntarily Sheila put up a hand as
+if he had struck her.
+
+"So soon?" she breathed, looking beyond him at Helen's bowed head.
+
+"Not the worst--yet," Keith answered handing her the paper.
+
+She took in the contents at a glance; and for a long minute she stood
+gazing at it; lifeless as a statue; white to the lips, their first
+tremor resolutely stilled.
+
+Presently she came back, as it were, from a long way off.  "We can
+still hope--and pray," she said just above her breath.
+
+Then, turning from him, she hurried over to Helen; and Keith went
+out, leaving them together----
+
+
+Next morning there were hasty preparations to catch the midday boat.
+Keith's idea had been to cross with them and see them safe on English
+ground: but in the end there was no resisting Helen's urgent plea
+that he would not waste so many precious hours on them.
+
+She promised him a telegram from Dover, and another from Wynchcombe
+Friars.  Then, Helen-like, when it came to the actual pang of
+parting, she impulsively clutched his arm.
+
+"Oh--_take care_ of yourself," she said with smothered intensity.
+"Both of you gone: and we alone--waiting----"
+
+"For the fulfilment of your conviction," he reminded her.  "Be sure
+_I_ shall not rest till I have found him."
+
+"Do you suppose I doubt that?" she asked, a new tenderness in her
+eyes.
+
+But even to him she could not speak her inmost fear--"What if Mark
+were wounded and in German hands?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+  "Your hearts are lifted up; your hearts
+    That have foreknown the utter price;
+  Your hearts burn upward, as a flame
+    Of splendour and of sacrifice,"
+                  _To Women_--LAWRENCE BINYON.
+
+
+Wynchcombe Friars again--with the spirit of Mark haunting them in
+every room and at every turn of the grounds.  Most intolerable were
+the little intimate things that conjured up his presence, the very
+tone of his voice: and--to crown all, there was Bobs.  His ecstatic
+greeting, the sobbing squeals of joy that Mark so loved to hear; his
+rush beyond them, obviously in search of his master; shook the
+foundations of their fortitude.  Not until now did Helen discover how
+much virtue had gone out of her: and the reaction, while it lasted,
+was a nightmare of which she afterwards felt heartily ashamed.
+
+Sheila, thankful to be alone with her at such a time, quietly took
+the reins of government into her small, capable hands.  On the day
+after their arrival she put Lady Forsyth to bed and practically kept
+her there for a week, soothing and stimulating, with massage, the
+nerves of her head and her spirit.
+
+She had the peculiar love of the born healer for all things hurt or
+unhappy; and the reserve force in her, detected by Keith, had kept
+the poise of her spirit unshaken through all.  But the hovering
+shadow of a smile no longer haunted her lips.  She had learnt, by
+aspiration rather than petition, to draw freely upon the one
+unlimited Source of Strength; and young as she was, the older woman
+grew to rely upon her utterly during those days when the light within
+her was darkness.
+
+Mercifully they found no strangers in the house; and Sir Richard's
+sisters promptly discovered plausible excuses for going home.  Helen
+was evidently in good hands; and in no mood for any other company.
+So for a while they two had their shrine of sacred memories to
+themselves; and Lady Forsyth who had supposed she knew her Sheila
+through and through, began to feel as if she had never really known
+her--till now.  Such still, strong natures are slow studies always.
+In the ordinary way of life, they seldom sparkle or allure.  It needs
+the high demand to call forth the hidden elements that make them the
+salt of the earth.  And now, in response to that high demand, the
+true Sheila shone out like a star in darkness.
+
+Alone with her and the healing influences of home, Helen's courage
+revived apace; and with it her natural tendency to merge the personal
+in the larger view.
+
+All over England, all over Europe, suspense or suffering, in some
+form, had become a paramount law of life.  It was the price of
+patriotism.  Men paid it with their blood and their mutilated bodies:
+women with their tears and mutilated lives.  One in suffering, they
+had the more need, all of them, to be one in courage.  And Mark
+himself had willed to give everything, without reserve, without
+regret.  Bitter repining on her part were simple disloyalty to him:
+and there remained the saving mercy that her sorrow was tinged with
+hope.
+
+There came a morning when she felt able to speak of these things to
+Sheila; even to tell her in detail of that talk in her turret-room;
+and their tacit, mutual resolve not to fail him in this last and
+hardest test of loyalty linked them closer than ever----
+
+
+So far no word from Bel; and Lady Forsyth felt anxious, a little.
+Deep and real fellow-feeling had wakened her first genuine impulse of
+affection towards the girl.  She had written almost as to a daughter.
+And on this very morning of her talk with Sheila, Bel's answer
+came:--heart-broken, purged of affectation, yet emphasising, in every
+line, her complete divergence of feeling and point of view.
+
+"You will wonder, dear, why I haven't written sooner, but I'm an
+arrant coward inside, and I simply couldn't face putting the cold
+truth on paper.  Your sweet letter, written while the shock was fresh
+upon you, was a heroic thing.  One sees where Mark got his courage.
+If he'd only had a little less of it--he might be with us still.  You
+will disapprove of that 'If.'  But I'm too utterly crushed to invent
+correct sentiments.  I can only put my own down anyhow, even if
+they're all wrong.  Sweet of you to tell me of your private
+conviction.  I hope to Heaven it may be true: but I have no
+sustaining faith to keep me going.  Myself, I had a horrid feeling,
+that last night, that it was--the end.  It's dear of you to say I can
+come when I like.  But just now, having to work keeps one from
+collapse and I am sure you two are happier together.  Later
+on--perhaps.  Harry is an angel to me.  But I'm not pleasant company
+these days.  Nothing interests me now and I hate this abominable war
+worse than ever.  If you hear any news, please wire.  I got a letter
+from him--after yours.  And it smashed me up.  That's partly why I
+didn't write.  Love to you and Sheila
+
+  from your desperately unhappy,
+                              BEL."
+
+
+Lady Forsyth handed the letter to Sheila.  It was blotted at the end,
+where tears had dropped.
+
+"Poor child!  She cares more than I gave her credit for.--I wonder,"
+she added, half to herself, "what he would think of that letter?"
+
+Sheila bit her lip and was silent, and they fell to discussing Lady
+Forsyth's latest scheme--country Cottage Homes for Children Orphaned
+by the War.
+
+
+That morning proved a turning-point in their new, shadowed life.  On
+all sides there was work crying out to be done.  They had no right
+any longer to shut themselves up with their sorrow.
+
+"If we believe he will come back, we must live up to our faith," Lady
+Forsyth said simply: and they did so, to the best of their power.
+Keith wrote every few days, just to keep in touch with them and
+report his movements.  There was nothing else to report--as yet.
+
+Among countless notes of sympathy and hope, and of admiration for
+Mark was none more uplifting to the mother's heart than the sincere
+and simple tribute of Colonel Munro.
+
+
+"To the Regiment and to me personally," he wrote, "the loss is so
+great that although the worst is reported, we cannot give up hope.
+Neither will you, I feel sure, for many weeks to come.  Forsyth's
+presence among us was an inspiration.  It is not often in these
+dead-level days that one meets with a man who seems a natural-born
+king.  Without exaggeration, that was how we felt about him.
+Unfortunately, those of his company who were with him last are also
+missing; but I feel convinced we shall hear of them all yet.  I have
+named and described the men to Mr. Macnair, who writes that he is
+instituting a search on his own account.  Good luck to him: and to
+you--the very best that heart can wish.  Yours ever,
+
+R. MUNRO."
+
+
+Sheila shared that letter, and every other, even as she shared the
+difficult task of answering them all.  In this respect, at least, she
+was grateful to Bel who had tacitly relinquished the sad, high
+privilege that was hers by right.
+
+The cottage scheme involved much correspondence and occasional
+journeys to London: and it was then that they began to realise more
+acutely the contrast between the "War drama" as visualised by an
+island people, and the stern, yet stimulating actuality, just across
+the Channel.
+
+There, even at the Base, the atmosphere was electrical with the
+spirit of the Front, with the enthusiasm and passion of a great
+imaginative race, for whom invasion was no "bogey" but a bloody and
+devastating fact.  Here, the great unseen thing was frankly a
+sensation fitfully discerned through the fog of censored despatches;
+analysed, with bewildering brilliance, by literary strategists; and
+distorted by visionaries, who extolled "the war against War," and
+feverishly planned a new heaven on earth.
+
+Happily for them, the real issues hung upon the vigil and the valour
+of a negligible minority who were only concerned to beat the Germans,
+and to make good, with their lives, the State's miscalculations and
+delays.
+
+But the very advantages of the islander are a part of his many
+disabilities.  Not only did realisation come slowly to England: but
+it came too often in the wrong guise.  In London, the newspaper craze
+became a form of dram-drinking.  Everything that could be said about
+the great obsession was repeated over and over, in every conceivable
+tone of voice: till a bewildered public began to wonder whether
+politicians believed in their high-sounding generalities or
+journalists in their inspired leaders.
+
+Though social life had practically ceased, the pavements of the City
+were still thronged with men of military age, quite convinced, by the
+tone of certain journals, that their services were not urgently
+needed elsewhere; that the War would probably be over by Christmas;
+certainly by Easter.  And, after all, were they not doing good work,
+necessary work, on the spot?
+
+Lady Forsyth herself had reason to feel grateful, often, for the
+steadying effect of contact with the real thing--even the fringe of
+it: and her native sensibility to atmosphere made her feel, more
+keenly than most, the clash of contrast between the often unwholesome
+ferment of London and the immovable phlegm of the countryside.
+Coming home, tired in body and spirit, after a long day's work in
+Town, she would be beset by distracting doubts as to how this great
+and casual country of hers would emerge from the searching test of
+war.
+
+It was then that Sheila, quick to read her mood, would slip behind
+her, unloose her hair, and with skilful finger-tips, magically pluck
+out weariness and doubts alike, till Lady Forsyth would catch at her
+hands and kiss them.
+
+"Sheila, that's not mere massage.  You seem to reach one's very soul."
+
+And the girl stood smiling down upon her like a young goddess radiant
+with conscious power.
+
+"That's because I'm loving you hard all the time," she said.  "It's a
+heavenly gift.  I used to feel--such a dumb thing.  Now I can give it
+all out through my fingers, I feel free.  And--Dearest," she added
+gravely, "you mustn't get disheartened because London, on the
+surface, seems unspeakable.  The unspeakables are always on the
+surface.  Underneath, there are hundreds of real workers and silent
+sufferers, doing and bearing things without trumpets or banners.  And
+aren't our sailors and soldiers miracles to praise God for?  Surely
+such leaven as that must end in leavening the whole lump----"
+
+"You're a miracle to praise God for," Lady Forsyth began; but her lip
+trembled and she was silent.
+
+Then Sheila, in her protecting mother-fashion, drew the older woman's
+head close to her breast.  "Nearly three weeks now," she whispered.
+"We _must_ hear something soon."
+
+Lady Forsyth shivered; but Sheila went resolutely on: "London wears
+you out, Mums, body and soul.  Let's give it up for a little.
+There's plenty of work on the spot.  It will hearten up Mark's people
+to see more of you.  They must be anxious too, in their own way."
+
+They were: and it was the very reflection of her own anxiety, the
+hovering question on every face, that at first made this paramount
+duty a very real ordeal.  But it was Mark's work; and his mother
+found it by no means devoid of compensation.  It drew them all closer
+together; it threw fresh light on Mark's individual fashion of
+upholding the aristocratic ideal among a free people; and it steadily
+strengthened her own conviction that there, where human nature is
+still untainted by industrialism, lies the true hope of England's
+future.  She was sustained, also, by a private resolve that when Mark
+returned he should find, within the boundaries of his own kingdom, a
+right spirit towards the War.
+
+Very soon she discovered an ally of equal enthusiasm and wider
+experience--Dr. Warburton, Headmaster of High Rough School.  He had
+lost no time in getting to the Front, as Chaplain of the Forces,
+leaving High Rough in charge of Rex Maitland, to that gentleman's
+undisguised satisfaction.  Already the fatal word "indispensable" had
+become a mark of distinction more coveted in some quarters than a
+decoration.  Warburton, at home for the moment, on business connected
+with the school, spent most of his spare time trying to instil the
+spirit of the trenches into cottages and country shops, where
+impassioned leaders were dismissed as "hot air" and despatches full
+of foreign names were only half understood.
+
+As an old friend of the family, he had been among the first admitted
+to see Helen, on her return from abroad: and the day after her talk
+with Sheila, he turned up at tea-time in the private hope that he
+might glean news of Mark.
+
+His leonine head with its shock of grizzled hair, hawk's eyes under
+shaggy brows, and a Homeric laugh, gave a general impression of
+bigness, belied by his mere inches: but the man's inner stature
+corresponded unmistakably with the laugh and the lion's head.
+
+Within a week, now, he would be back in France.  "And high time,
+too," he added, thoughtfully sipping his tea.  "I'll miss coming
+here.  Otherwise--" he shot out his great moustache--"It's healthier
+at the Front in spite of the shells.  The real spirit of England is
+in the trenches and on the sea."
+
+As he spoke the door opened and a parlour-maid brought in the
+afternoon post.
+
+"Ah--Keith," Lady Forsyth murmured, seizing a thin unstamped envelope
+and letting the rest fall into her lap.
+
+Warburton rose, as if to put down his cup, and strolled across to the
+window.  Presently a small sound of relief reached him and he turned
+quickly about.  "Found him, have they?"
+
+"Not yet," Helen answered with a brave smile.  "But the Sergeant, who
+was wounded trying to help him, has made his way back to the Regiment
+after hair-breadth adventures.  They're sending him home at once,
+Keith says.  He has my address.  He will write.  Then I can go and
+see him."  She spoke in short swift sentences, holding emotion in
+leash.  Sheila had risen and was standing near the fire, ostensibly
+warming her hands.  "He and another soldier managed to drag Mark to a
+farm.  He was hit in the head.  Unconscious.  They could do no more.
+The Germans began shelling the place: and there they had to leave him
+with kind French people.  They weren't even sure--if he was alive.
+That's all--so far."  She tried to smile.  "It doesn't lift the fog
+much, does it?  But still, just to see this man who was with him----"
+
+"Yes--yes," Warburton's regard held more of admiration than of pity.
+"Let me go with you--if the call comes in time," he added, and rather
+abruptly took his leave.
+
+That night Lady Forsyth wrote to Bel.  "Come to me for the week-end,
+dear," she added, "if you feel you can now, and would care to hear in
+detail what little I may have to tell.  With any luck I ought to see
+Sergeant Macgregor before Saturday."
+
+And in a very few days the summons came.  It was from Aldershot; and
+Sheila decided to go with them.  While they interviewed Macgregor she
+would love to make a round of the wards.  For, in secret, she missed
+her "poor things" and the work at Boulogne.
+
+It was hard not to hope for impossibilities; but the Sergeant's
+rather disjointed tale served neither to justify Helen's obstinate
+conviction, nor to dispel her secret fears.  He was a red-headed man,
+square and sturdy, just able to hobble.  His nerves were obviously
+shaken by all he had been through; and his emotion in speaking of
+that particular day made it the harder to restrain her own.  Of the
+nature of Mark's wound he could tell her nothing except that there
+was blood all over his head and that they had bandaged it roughly--he
+and a British Tommy, who contributed his own mud-stained puttee, worn
+for weeks.
+
+The mother winced at that.  "Did he know you?" she asked quickly
+hoping he had not seen.
+
+"Ah canna rightly tell, ma leddy," was the unsatisfactory reply.  "Ah
+kneeled in the mud and ah said: 'Ye ken verra weel who I am, sir?'
+An' he smiled crooked-like an' pit up his hand to stroke me cheek
+like a bairn.  An' there came a sound in his thrapple.  But niver a
+word.  The Lord shield him from the hands o' they Jairman blayguards."
+
+But Helen knew, now, that the tide of war had rolled over the village
+where they had left her son: and for the moment hope and courage were
+dead within her.
+
+
+Warburton left for France next day, having promised to look up Keith:
+and Bel arrived with Harry to stay over Sunday.  Lady Forsyth had
+smiled, not without understanding, at her request that Harry might
+"come too."  Even in her sorrow Bel was still a victim to fear of
+being bored: and Harry's masculine attitude of worship and service
+was more of an asset than she knew.
+
+Lady Forsyth discovered many fresh points in common with Harry; but
+the change in Bel, obvious to both, troubled her beyond measure.  Not
+merely was her smiling serenity subdued by grief: but it seemed
+overlaid with a fine film of hardness from which things painful or
+emotional glanced off like arrows from a surface of steel.  She would
+neither look at the papers, nor talk of the war.  This fact alone
+made conversation difficult; but for Helen this stumbling-block was
+as nothing to its inner significance.  The strain and pain of war,
+that was steadily softening and enlarging Sheila, appeared to be
+having the opposite effect on Bel.  Deliberately she turned her eyes
+away from beholding the world's anguish and heroism: deliberately she
+hardened her heart against its effect upon herself; so that she
+seemed in danger of losing even the surface softness that had been no
+small part of her charm.
+
+Plainly, her love for Mark, however sincere, had no alchemic power to
+transmute the dross in her to gold.  Would his return, such as he was
+now, dissolve that film of hardness?  Or was the girl laying up
+further tragedy for herself and others?
+
+Alone with Lady Forsyth, Bel was gentle and affectionate, yet
+completely aloof.  She listened to Macgregor's story with set lips
+and a fine line between her brows.  Though the mother's voice shook
+and tears threatened, Bel's eyes were dry.
+
+"And after that--you can _still_ manage to hope?" was all she said.
+
+"Dear, it is not so much hope with me, as--belief," Lady Forsyth
+answered gently, and Bel's sigh had a faint note of exasperation.
+
+"You are amazing," she said.  "And--so like him."  Then with a swift
+dramatic gesture, she rose and seemed to fling away her mantle of
+composure.  "Oh, this brutal, senseless war!" she cried, her eyes
+still hard, her low voice tense with feeling.  "A man like
+that--splendid, strong, gifted--smashed up like a bit of matchboard.
+And what earthly use has it been to any one--his sacrifice or our
+pain?"
+
+The older woman listened to that strange outburst with something very
+like relief.  It proved that Bel was not hard all through and it
+cried aloud the very thoughts that had visited her own heart in the
+small hours when all the wheels run low.
+
+"Bel--Bel!" she remonstrated gently, "that is _the_ question one dare
+not ask.  It's hard not to.  No one knows that better than I do.  But
+the answer is, if Mark, and others of his quality, had taken that
+point of view, where would England be now?"
+
+"Oh England!"  She dismissed her country with a faint shrug.  "Mark
+would be here with us, safe and whole.  That's all I know--or care."
+
+Her voice still had its low bitterness; but it shook a little now and
+going over to the window she sat awhile looking out upon the wood and
+the terrace where she had walked with him in that other life, gone
+beyond recall.
+
+Vaguely she heard the door open.  Then a low sound from Lady Forsyth
+made her look round sharply.  Helen had risen--her lips were set and
+pale.
+
+Bel glanced at the open letter she held out to her.  It was a formal
+intimation, garnished with formal regret, that Lieutenant Sir Mark
+Forsyth, formerly reported missing, in November, was now officially
+reported killed.  The scanty information received in the past three
+weeks gave no grounds for supposing otherwise.
+
+"Of course this was bound to come," Helen said mechanically.
+
+But Bel pushed aside the paper and covered her face.
+
+Helen stood silent a moment; then she found courage to repeat her own
+conviction.
+
+"Dear, they may report what they please.  Mark _is_ alive.  I know
+it."
+
+Bel simply shook her head.
+
+"You don't believe me?"
+
+"No."
+
+"But--you won't go into mourning.  Bel, you mustn't."
+
+"No--no.  I detest mourning."
+
+The muffled voice broke suddenly.  Lady Forsyth put an arm round the
+girl's shoulders and Bel leaned against her sobbing like a child.
+Then, with a shivering sigh, she released herself and hurried out of
+the room.
+
+Lady Forsyth picked up that hateful slip of paper and dropped it into
+the fire.  Mark was alive:--nothing could shake her belief in that.
+But he was wounded--and in German hands.  Her inmost fear had come
+true.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III
+
+VIA CRUCIS
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+  "Love is swift of foot,
+    Love's a man of war,
+  And can hit and can shoot
+    From far."
+                        GEORGE HERBERT.
+
+
+It was on the first of December that Sir Mark Forsyth was officially
+reported killed; and it was upon an evening of early November, on a
+battle-scarred road of Northern France, that a certain waggon-load of
+dead and wounded men jolted leisurely towards a certain village
+lately recaptured by the Prussians.  The open body of the cart was
+spacious and full of straw that had once been tolerably clean, but
+was now defiled with mud and blood.  It held six men--two French,
+three British, and one German.  Two of them were obviously dead,
+three were as obviously alive and in cruel pain.  The sixth, who wore
+a kilt and a blood-stained puttee wound about his head, lay on his
+back, motionless, wide-eyed, watching a bank of grey cloud dissolve
+into shredded wisps of gold.  Presently the sun broke through and
+smiled upon the aftermath of battle as upon the sheaves of some
+peaceful harvest garnered with thanks and praise.
+
+In this unceremonious fashion was Mark removed from the farm where
+Macgregor had been forced to leave him--dead, to all appearance, or
+at the point of death.
+
+Of how he came to be there, in such woeful company, he knew nothing.
+His brain seemed blurred and curiously inert.  He felt no pain, only
+a horrid faintness; utter exhaustion from loss of blood.  He would
+have given the world for a sip of brandy.  Where was his flask? he
+wondered vaguely, but felt too weak to stir a finger.
+
+Above him, beside the driver, sat a little French doctor, talking and
+gesticulating vehemently.  He might be of use, Mark reflected with
+feeble impatience, if one could only attract his attention.
+
+Summoning all his ebbing strength, he tried to shout.  The sole
+result was a horrid choking sensation and an abortive noise in his
+throat.
+
+He grew suddenly alarmed.  What did it mean?  And where were they
+going?  Had he, possibly, been taken prisoner in spite of himself?
+
+There was none to enlighten him, even could he have spoken; and the
+torment of uncertainty remained.  The fact that he suffered no
+physical pain was a minor item to be thankful for.  Not altogether a
+minor item, perhaps, judging from sounds emitted by the German at the
+far end of the cart.  Between groans and broken curses he was calling
+impartially on God and his mother.
+
+The last galvanised Mark's brain into momentary life.  What of his
+own mother--and Bel?  Would they believe him killed?  How long was it
+since his clock of time had stopped dead?  Would it ever be set going
+again?  And--what of the fight?
+
+More questions--nothing but questions--unanswered and unanswerable.
+They buzzed about him like hornets; and to be rid of them he fell
+back on memory.  He recalled a world that rained shells and
+shrapnel--a violent, friendly and increasingly muddy world, in which
+Allies and enemies were wildly intermingled, till it was cleft from
+end to end by long and opposing lines of trenches, with a No Man's
+Land of varying width between.  In the No Man's Land things had
+happened: things that left a scar on the memory--things a man could
+not talk about and, most unhappily, could not forget.  In those early
+days reliefs were few and infrequent; and Mark looked back on trench
+life as an endless age of strain--nerve and body and imaginative
+brain racked to the limit of endurance, and under all a dogged
+resolve that there should be no limit of endurance but the arbitrary
+limit of death.
+
+Too vividly he remembered those last days, when grey-green battalions
+had been hurled against them, wave on wave, till his Highlanders, who
+stood like rocks in a storm, had been forced to retire by an urgent
+order from those who alone knew when wisdom demanded sacrifice of
+ground rather than of men.  Stubbornly, foot by foot, they had fallen
+back from their hard-won position.  Then--consternation ... and
+confusion.  The battalion on their right seemed to have melted away.
+
+But the enemy allowed them no breathing space for dismay.  They were
+in dire peril: and Mark lost not a moment in rallying his men for a
+final desperate stand....  Suddenly, in the midst of it, when the
+struggle was fiercest, the earth had seemed to collapse under him.
+He recalled a horrid sensation of falling backwards, headlong--into
+nothingness.
+
+At that point his memory broke off short.  The rest was a meaningless
+jumble of sights and sensations like a troubled dream.
+
+He was lying in a turnip-field.  Something had happened to his head.
+Blood was flowing freely, but he felt no pain.  In vain he tried to
+move.  Weakness flowed over him.  Living and conscious, he lay there
+among the dead, listening to the roar of battle that rolled steadily
+farther away; fearful exceedingly lest they should bury or burn him;
+or, finding him alive, should take him prisoner while this
+ignominious helplessness hung like lead upon his limbs.
+
+At times he could hear voices and men passing.  But very soon
+darkness fell again; and out of the darkness came a vision of
+Macgregor's face.  He remembered trying to speak, and the feel of the
+man's rough cheek when he patted it in sign of recognition.  To his
+intense relief, he had felt them trying to move him.  What had come
+of it?  Where were they now?
+
+The questions were at him afresh and the haunting thought of his
+mother.  Once more he summoned all his strength in an effort to reach
+her mentally.  He had succeeded in doing so on more than one
+occasion.  But now, the attempt was lunacy.  It simply exhausted his
+last remnant of strength, and once more he slipped back into the
+outer dark....
+
+
+By some miracle, his resolute spirit hung on to the thread of life
+that remained; and when next it struggled up from the bottomless pit,
+the cart and the jolting and the smell of blood had vanished like all
+the other dreams.  He was lying on a bed.  He could feel the blanket
+against his chin.  The air he breathed was faintly impregnated with
+antiseptics and the scent of clean straw.
+
+As his brain cleared, he heard women's voices murmuring rhythmically
+in a foreign tongue.  Too weak and weary to stir, he lay awhile
+steeped in contentment, till that rhythmical murmur resolved itself
+into Latin prayers.  French nuns, good souls, must be praying by his
+bed.
+
+Next moment, the chill trickle of water on his face made him start
+and open his eyes.  One of the nuns was bending over him.
+
+"Our Lady be praised," she said softly.  "The spirit has returned.
+Monsieur will drink this, and strength will also return."
+
+She held a cup to his lips; warm milk dashed with brandy--pure
+nectar!  It seemed to set life stirring in his veins, even as the
+woman's face set some vague memory stirring in his mind.  The breadth
+of brow and cheek-bones, the mouth, with its resolute softness and
+the deep dent above the chin, struck a note of dim familiarity; but
+he felt far too lazy and comfortable to search for a clue.
+
+The barn-like room in which he found himself was no hospital, but a
+rough makeshift.  There were but half a dozen beds like his own.  The
+remaining sufferers lay on straw pallets; and the little French
+doctor, whose profile he recognised, appeared to be in charge.  That
+fact, and the presence of nuns made him hopeful of being in the right
+hands.  If only he could ask!  But the curse of dumbness was on him
+still; and a fear that it might be permanent chilled the flow of
+returning life.
+
+The other nuns had risen and moved away.  She whom they called
+Sœur Colette stood smiling down on him.
+
+"Ça va bien," she said.  "Monsieur comprend?"
+
+He made a sign of assent, then with his left hand and eyebrow, tried
+to convey the question he could not ask.  Her face lit up.
+
+"Le bon Dieu soit bénit.  Monsieur desires a little conversation.  As
+much as one can, I will relate."
+
+Serene and smiling, she sat beside him on a low stool.  It was purely
+refreshing to hear a woman's voice again.
+
+"M. le docteur," she told him, "a saint of God with a rough tongue,
+gathered up many dead and wounded from the terrible battle, more than
+a week ago, and brought them here to the Red Cross Hospital, then in
+the hands of my people.  Now--Mary Mother, pity us!--it is once more
+taken by the Prussians.  The hospital is seized for themselves, and
+M. le docteur is graciously permitted to use this ruined farm.
+Those, alas, who recover become prisoners of war.  Monsieur himself
+on arriving was as one dead; and, next evening, we of the Sisterhood
+must pray for the souls of the departed.  But I, who came to kneel
+near Monsieur, said: 'This, surely, is not death.'  While others
+summoned M. le docteur, myself I found, by the mercy of God, one
+pulse, so small, so feeble, there in the neck of Monsieur.  Imaginez!"
+
+Mark smiled his crooked smile and lifted his eyebrows.  He found it
+hard to believe in her fairy tale.  But, if it were true, this woman,
+with the beautiful familiar face, had evidently been his good angel.
+
+She was explaining to him now the nature of his wound, and how
+splinters of bone pressing on the brain made him powerless to speak
+or move.  These the little doctor had partially lifted.  But the
+complete operation was a delicate one; and he would prefer to wait
+awhile, in hopes that the tide of battle should roll eastward again.
+
+"It might be well for Monsieur, then, to seem as one dead," Sœur
+Colette explained, with a flicker of humour in her great dark eyes.
+"They would not think him worth the trouble to remove; and in Paris
+all is possible."
+
+Mark had need of the utmost consolation he could extract from that
+thought.  For, as strength returned, impatience returned also, and
+his imprisoned spirit girded at the hampering hulk of a body over
+which it had lost command--for how long?
+
+Questions again!  He grew to hate them heartily.  Wherever he turned
+for relief, there one or more would spring up to confound him; and at
+moments of supreme exasperation, his brain seemed alive with notes of
+interrogation, seeking answers and finding none.  More than once he
+vowed mentally that if he regained the power of speech, he would
+never again ask a question while he lived.
+
+
+And he suffered more than exasperation during those interminable
+November days.  The very inactivity of his body seemed to induce a
+restless activity of mind.  Fleeting inspirations mocked him:
+wonderful, impossible ideas for bas-reliefs and great symbolic
+figures.  Strange moods swept through him and strange unreasoning
+fears.  There were visions also--and dreams: visions of things he
+would have given years of life to forget; dreams from which he awoke
+in a cold sweat, so shaken that he would lie staring at the darkness,
+positively afraid to close his eyes.
+
+Very often the dreams were nightmare distortions of realities.  These
+had a horrid knack of recurring at intervals; and the one most
+dreaded by Mark concerned a minor incident of No Man's Land that had
+been permanently photographed on his brain.
+
+Always it began at the same point: dusk, illumined fitfully by
+searchlights and bursting shells; the silhouetted figure of a Sapper
+subaltern walking coolly into the open with his coil of wire; then
+the scream of a bursting shell--and there, where the boy had stood,
+was a mound of earth and debris at a crater's rim.
+
+Later on, the moon revealed something that moved fitfully near the
+edge of the mound.  It was the leg of that Sapper subaltern--buried
+alive.  Under heavy and persistent enemy fire, any attempt at rescue
+would have been madness; and Mark, digging and carrying all that
+night, had prayed that a second shell might put the boy out of his
+misery.  But in the morning the leg still moved, and continued to
+move at intervals all day; till Mark, fresh to such horrors, could
+endure it no more.
+
+That night, when the firing slackened a little, another figure, armed
+with a spade, had crept over the parapet and walked coolly out into
+the open.
+
+And again, just as it reached the mound, a shell screamed and the
+earth yawned--and when Mark recovered consciousness, he was lying on
+his face a good many yards nearer his own trenches, himself half
+buried in the debris of that other mound, which was now no more.  He
+thanked God the boy was dead; but the memory of that twenty-four
+hours had haunted him for weeks; and now with pitiless persistence it
+haunted his dreams.
+
+The fact that he could neither speak nor shake off mental obsessions
+by a rousing walk, aggravated their tyranny over him; and there were
+times when it crazed him, almost, to lie there, like a felled tree,
+powerless even to ask how he could let his dear ones know he was
+alive.
+
+One morning, in such a mood, he tried to convey by gesture this
+question that so troubled him; and, to his delight, Sœur Colette
+understood almost at once.  No, Monsieur could neither send nor
+receive letters until the good day when "les poilus" or "les Tommies"
+came to their rescue.  And Monsieur had lost his talisman.
+
+Mark's left hand went quickly to his throat.  It was true.  The
+precious silver disc and silver chain were gone.  He glanced at his
+wrist.  No leather-coated watch--his mother's gift.  Filled with
+sudden, acute dismay, he went through the dumb show of feeling in
+coat-pockets.
+
+Again Sœur Colette understood and shook her head.  There was
+nothing in Monsieur's coat--nothing at all.  Monsieur le docteur
+could discover neither his name nor his regiment.  In proof of her
+statement, she brought him the coat.  It was rifled very completely.
+His flask, his gold pencil--Sheila's present--his letter-case and
+letters--all gone.  The very buttons and badges had been neatly
+removed; a finishing touch that suggested the gentle German.
+
+And Mark lay there realising that, unless and until he recovered his
+speech, he was lost, absolutely--even his identity gone.
+
+He was not merely a log, but a nameless log.  He chafed at the
+ignominy of it, as a man in sore straits will chafe at a trifle, yet
+endure the worst with fortitude.
+
+Suddenly, with vast relief, he remembered his brogues.  If only he
+could tell Sœur Colette to look inside them!
+
+But the attempt produced such wild and ludicrous misunderstandings
+that the little nun grew embarrassed and Mark gave it up in despair.
+Perhaps his brogues had also been stolen by the Germans.  After all,
+his precious name was no earthly use to him at present, and the
+future was a blank.
+
+
+In this monotonous fashion the first weeks of November ebbed away.
+On the whole they were left in peace, except for periodical
+incursions of a rough-mannered German officer with aggressive
+moustaches, a high narrow forehead, and unmistakable Prussian eyes.
+
+It was his joke, when in a humorous mood, to bid the fierce little
+doctor hurry up with his contributions for the nearest prison camp in
+the Fatherland.  More than once he infuriated Mark by alluding to him
+as "that English swine."  But it was the thinly-veiled insolence of
+the man's manner to Sœur Colette that made him long most
+vehemently for command of his hands and tongue.  Happily for himself,
+and for those who loved him, he could do no more than glare and
+clench a hidden fist.
+
+On one occasion it chanced that Captain Adler encountered the flame
+of impotent wrath in his eyes, and the sight appeared to tickle his
+Teutonic sense of humour.  With deliberate relish and a sneering
+smile he looked Mark over from head to foot, then turned to the
+doctor who stood near, inwardly nervous, outwardly fiercer than ever.
+
+"Doubtless the hoch wohlgeboren a without-fear-or-reproach knight
+is," he remarked, with a contemptuous jerk of his thumb.  "But never
+again will he for the fair-and-distressed lady of his admiration one
+blow of revenge strike."
+
+Mark could only set his teeth.  Sœur Colette, who knew a little
+German, bent very low over the young Frenchman she was feeding; and
+the Prussian, chuckling audibly, swung out of the barn.
+
+That afternoon there came a lull in the unceasing rain and wind.  The
+sky cleared and the sun shone out with a divine effulgence upon all
+the ruin and tragedy wrought by man.
+
+Since Mark's arrival there had been only one such golden interval.
+It had lasted several days, and he had succeeded in conveying his
+great wish to be out in the open.  So to-day the little doctor and
+his orderly carried him, bed and all, into the homely garden.
+
+There, storm-draggled chrysanthemums made patches of colour.  Stray
+leaves of Virginia creeper flamed on the walls; and the farmhouse
+itself gaped roofless to the indifferent heavens.  A dovecot,
+battered and empty of doves, leaned drunkenly against the barn that
+was their hospital.  The poplars behind it, etched delicately upon
+the blue, had been stripped, in this terrible autumn, of branches as
+well as leaves; and the fields beyond were pock-marked by shell fire.
+Yet peasant women still patiently tended the wounded earth and its
+products.
+
+Some way off, on rising ground, stood the feudal chateau--what
+remained of it: headless turrets, gables shattered and distorted;
+windows, like empty eye-sockets, mere gaping holes.  And the garden,
+beneath, sloping downward to the river, was a chaos of trampled
+shrubberies and twisted iron.
+
+Mark, in his utter loneliness, cut off from letters and activity and
+the companionable gift of speech, could, at least, thank God for the
+"silver streak" and the grey battleships that preserved his own most
+sacred treasures from a like fate.  But thought of those treasures so
+tormented him and roused such a buzzing swarm of questions, that he
+refrained--as far as possible--from futile excursions into the future
+or the past; and he began to grow impatient for the advent of Sœur
+Colette with his chocolate.
+
+He accepted, without after-thought, the fact that it was always she
+who attended him and entertained him; nor was he disposed to quarrel
+with the arrangement.  He had discovered by this time why she created
+about him an atmosphere of home and of assurance that all was well.
+Dreaming one night of Sheila, he had waked in the morning to find
+Sœur Colette standing by his bed; and the haunting sense of
+familiarity was a puzzle no longer.
+
+For a moment Mark had fancied he must still be dreaming.  Then the
+nun spoke and the illusion vanished.  But the charm remained; a charm
+that carried him back to early days before Bel's disturbing witchery
+had changed the complexion of life.  In his isolation and bitter
+uncertainty, he surrendered himself, instinctively, to this blessed
+illusion of home.  It was his one real solace throughout those grey,
+interminable weeks.
+
+What their one-sided talks and increasing friendliness might mean to
+Sœur Colette he neither knew, nor sought to know.  As a nun, he
+deemed her sacred, a being set apart.  He was apt to forget--as the
+insolent Adler never forgot--that a nun is nevertheless a woman.  But
+to-day, as the minutes lagged past and she did not appear, there
+stirred in him an emotion other than mere impatience--an emotion
+belonging to that virile world where a man could walk and talk and
+fight and hold a woman in his arms.
+
+He checked himself sharply.  That would never do.  It was almost as
+if, through this unknown Frenchwoman, the spirit of Sheila were
+drawing him back to his old allegiance that, in those July days
+before the deluge, had been on the verge--he knew it now--of
+blossoming into a strong and deep love.  And she--?  Had she,
+possibly, begun to care?  But that also, would never do.  He had
+chosen; or, to be more accurate, Bel had chosen and he had succumbed.
+
+He surveyed his great prostrate figure almost with disgust.  Would
+Bel, as revealed in her recent letters, have any use for a lover who
+could neither pay her compliments nor take her in his arms?  Strange
+how, in these few weeks, she seemed to have slipped away from him.
+Even her face eluded his memory.  It was the face and form of his
+virile little mother that was most constantly with him in these days.
+
+Now, deliberately, he called up a vision of an earlier Bel--unknown,
+irresistible, ardently desired--sitting on a rock beside the burn
+awaiting his avowal, while he fondly believed her dreaming her own
+dreams.  This time memory played him no tricks; and the very
+vividness of the scene intensified his dawning perception of a
+change, gradual, indefinable, that had crept into their relation
+since war wrenched them apart.  Her first letters, he remembered, had
+bothered him; and he had found the same lack, the same touch of
+artificiality in those that had followed him to France.  His very
+hunger for them had only increased the vague disappointment they so
+often produced.  He recalled a remark of hers: "Separations are
+rather uncanny things."  Curiously true--in her own case.  While she
+was with him, it seemed, she approximated instinctively to the woman
+he would have her be.  Without him, she became simply the product of
+her unsatisfactory antecedents.
+
+Well, he had lost her letters with the rest of his kit; and on the
+whole he was not sorry....
+
+Just as impatience revived afresh, Sœur Colette and the chocolate
+appeared at last.
+
+Sight of her recalled the morning's incident and she saw the
+recollection in his eyes.
+
+"Monsieur must not so concern himself on my account," she said, after
+apologies for the delay.  "If Monsieur could know what one has seen,
+what one has passed through unharmed, since they drove us from our
+convent!  I have no fear.  I am shielded by Our Lady!"
+
+For a few seconds Mark looked hard at her.  Then, to her amazement,
+he blurted out two words, the first he had uttered for a month.
+"Tell me," he said.  His voice sounded strange; but he had produced
+the right words, and he saw his own exultation repeated in her eyes.
+
+"Ah, Monsieur!" she cried.  "It will come at last--the miracle.  We
+have prayed without ceasing.  And now--one must obey Monsieur's first
+command!  But it is a story too terrible for altogether telling,
+Monsieur understands?"
+
+Monsieur understood very well; but he had a great wish to know more
+of this sainted woman, who smiled with Sheila's smile and spoke with
+her voice.  So in the quiet of that golden afternoon she told
+him--sitting on the doctor's camp-stool--of the town in Northern
+France that was her home, and of the bombardment that was the
+beginning of sorrows; when people lived in their cellars under the
+shadow of a greater fear than the fear of death.  For after the
+shells came the Uhlans, demanding money and wine and women; above all
+wine and more wine, drowning their manhood so that no form of
+brutality came amiss.
+
+With the same unimpassioned detachment, she told him of her own
+Sisterhood that, in pity, had stayed to help the wounded, and of "la
+petite Pauline."  A novice, beautiful and spirited, she had resented
+the coarse gallantry of certain German soldiers.  Her contempt had
+roused the devil in them.  Embraces not willingly given, must be
+taken by force.
+
+"And she--poor innocent--she died in my arms, crazed with terror and
+torment.  And they laughed ... those devils!"  She was silent a
+moment, looking out over the disfigured landscape.  "Monsieur, there
+are things that even the good God Himself can surely never forgive."
+
+Rising abruptly, she left him--haunted, enraged, half wishing he had
+not asked for her tale.  Yet these were the very abominations that,
+if ever he reached home again, must be remembered, verified, and
+mercilessly avenged.  She was right, that small fearless woman: there
+were things that God Himself could not forgive.
+
+From that day there came a slight change in Mark's happy relation
+with Sœur Colette.  Her likeness to Sheila worried him now, almost
+as much as it had charmed him before.  The sense of having
+unconsciously slipped away from Bel set him idealising her afresh;
+regilding her halo, till she became again almost the Bel of that July
+afternoon in the glen, before the shock of her repudiation had
+temporarily shaken his faith and love.
+
+Sœur Colette, dimly aware of some jar in their communion, suffered
+her own private shock of awakening.  While all went smoothly, she had
+suspected nothing.  Now she knew--and shame overwhelmed her.  While
+her lips had prayed daily for the victorious return of French or
+British soldiers, her heart, dedicated to the Mother of God, had been
+secretly dreading the end of this, the one idyll of her saintly life.
+And because she shrank from confession of that most human lapse, she
+devised for herself certain penances that failed signally to still
+the strange new disturbance within.
+
+At last, on a day, the dull thunder she had prayed for reverberated
+along the horizon.  By slow degrees it rolled nearer, steadily
+nearer, till Mark could distinguish the familiar note of bursting
+shells.  Then it was that he began to ask himself--would the Germans
+think him worth taking along with them as a prisoner of war?
+
+He hoped they might not even be given time to save their own skins.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+  "So hard it seems that one must bleed
+  Because another needs will bite!
+  All round we find cold nature slight
+  The feelings of the totter-knee'd."
+                                      MEREDITH.
+
+
+Lady Forsyth sat in her bedroom window-seat, looking out over the
+terrace to the restless pine woods tossed and tumbled by the wind.
+Masses of grey cloud sagged low above the trees.  Here and there
+patches of fragile blue showed fitfully.  Then the sun took courage
+and flashed a pale smile from between two scurrying clouds.
+Gradually the sky cleared.  The wet flags of the terrace gleamed like
+polished steel.  Drenched and dismal trees stood suddenly
+transfigured.  Every leaf and twig flaunted a diamond.
+
+"How Mark would love it!" was the mother's instinctive thought: and
+closing her eyes a moment she lifted her face to the sun's caress.
+The clear light revealed lines that had not been there in August.
+She had passed through deep waters, this bereaved woman, who refused
+to own herself bereaved: and in some ways the past week had seemed
+the longest, the hardest of all.  While Bel mourned her lover as
+dead, she, who refused to mourn her son, had been subjected to
+requests for photographs and details for obituary notices.  She had
+been threatened with a fresh epidemic of condolences; and, finally,
+in self-defence, had sent a brief notice to the _Times_, and _Morning
+Post_, announcing that Sir Mark Forsyth's family had not yet given up
+hope.  Let them denounce her for a fool if they chose!  The flame
+within still burned on; tremulous, unquenchable.
+
+When she looked down again, two figures had appeared on the terrace:
+Sheila and Mr. Seldon, moving very slowly, deep in talk.  The man was
+tall and thin, with a small, aristocratic head.  He could not yet
+walk without crutches; but, by a miracle of surgery, the leg had been
+saved.  He seemed a homeless creature: parents dead; married sister
+in India; and Sheila had begged that he might spend part of his
+convalescence at Wynchcombe Friars.
+
+She was quite frankly interested in his new development.  Whether
+that interest went deeper, Lady Forsyth found it hard to tell; the
+more so, that she felt doubtful how far Sheila had ever let herself
+go in respect of Mark.  That she loved him was certain, and natural
+enough; but the extent and nature of that love was her own most
+hidden secret, kept under lock and key.
+
+Lady Forsyth herself had hoped honestly, for Sheila's sake, that the
+girl's heart was not given irrevocably to Mark.  Yet here she was,
+with her native inconsistency, resenting the least sign that it might
+have strayed elsewhere.  She had the grace to remind herself that
+Sheila--by temperament and by her own shy confession--was made for
+marriage, for motherhood.  But--it must not be Seldon.  On that point
+Helen was unwavering: though, in spite of drawbacks, she liked the
+man.  She found him clever, interesting, and annoyingly
+self-conscious.  Sheila, it seemed, had complete faith in his
+remarkable transmutation.  Helen privately doubted whether it would
+outlast the stimulus of the war.  She even suspected him of playing
+up to the girl's new view of him in the hope that so he might win her
+after all.
+
+Well, Sheila was strong enough and wise enough to work out her own
+salvation; but there were moments when Helen was half tempted to wish
+that Mr. Seldon had stuck to his desert station and his whisky.
+
+By now the fugitive gleam had brought two more figures into the
+garden: Ralph Melrose, with his left arm in a sling, and Mona's young
+step-brother, Eldred Laurence: an infant of twenty who had been
+through everything from Mons to Ypres.  He limped badly and wore a
+bandage over one eye.  Both boys, Helen perceived, had brought back
+from their great ordeal an engaging modesty and cheerfulness; a truer
+perspective of things in general.  And they were not rare phenomena.
+They were average specimens of their kind; standing proofs of the
+hard paradox that "the senseless, devilish, bestial thing" called War
+had, even in a few months, done more to lift and enlarge the
+characters of those who waged it, in a right spirit, than a decade of
+material prosperity and peace.
+
+These three convalescents, and one other, represented Helen's
+household of the moment.  That other was the Rev. George Wilton,
+Wynchmere's new curate.  In an impulse of kindliness--since
+regretted--Helen had succumbed to the importunity of Mrs. Clutterbuck
+on his behalf.  With a battalion temporarily billeted on the little
+town, there were simply no "rooms" to be had; none, at least, that
+suited the Rev. Wilton's fastidious taste.  The one Hotel was
+over-crowded with officers.  Three subalterns had invaded the
+Vicarage and Mrs. Clutterbuck was in a quiver of anxiety over the
+possible effect upon her two plain daughters of khaki and frivolous
+conversation for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  If "dear Lady
+Forsyth" would take pity on Mr. Wilton, it would be an "act of
+Christian kindness," and who knew but she might find herself
+entertaining an angel unawares!
+
+She had entertained the angel for a week, now, and was only aware of
+having stumbled on a specimen of sanctified snobbery, who annoyed her
+to exasperation.  Though she numbered among her friends more than one
+Scottish Minister, the average English curate had a knack of setting
+all her bristles on end: and Mr. Wilton was the average curate--with
+aggravations.
+
+"He is what Americans would call a 'bromide,'" she had written to
+Keith shortly after his arrival.  "He discovers the obvious with
+enthusiasm.  He asks me for the toast or the salt as apologetically
+as if he were asking for a five pound note; and he says '_Eg_-zactly'
+to every word I utter--almost before it's out!  When I'm in a really
+wicked mood, I contradict myself wildly just to test his mental and
+moral agility!  I'm convinced I shall catch him out one day, backing
+up compulsion, or the right of churchmen to defend their country.
+And he's dead against both.  By which you may see that I'm badly
+needing the two of you to keep me in order...."
+
+By this time it was four o'clock.  The strollers had gone in for tea:
+and as Helen rose to join them, the "angel unawares" came flapping
+down the path through the rose-garden, a neatly folded mackintosh and
+an unrolled umbrella hanging over his left arm.
+
+There had been a partial movement of troops.  He had been out to "try
+his luck": and in that one respect, at least, she was his fervent
+well-wisher.
+
+She found them all in the drawing-room and Sheila making tea.
+
+"Couldn't wait for you, Mums," she apologised.  "The kettle was
+having a fit!"
+
+The two subalterns rose at her entrance.  But it was Wilton who
+secured her favourite chair and pushed it a couple of inches nearer
+the table.
+
+"I hope you didn't have your long wet walk in vain?" she said; and he
+turned an eloquent eye upon her as he sank back among his cushions.
+
+"I think not.  But even if I had, I cannot pretend I should have
+suffered serious disappointment."  His gaze wandered appreciatively
+round the firelit room.  "It has been such a pleasure--such a
+privilege...  Muffins?  Sandwiches?"
+
+He proffered them with eager empressement; and proceeded to recount,
+in minutest detail, the happy chance by which he believed he had at
+last secured the good cooking, the south aspect and the unlimited
+supply of hot water indispensable to his well-being.
+
+Lady Forsyth, it must be admitted, listened with only one ear.  The
+other was attentively following a discussion between Ralph and
+Laurence as to the best means of making a sheltered, complacent
+people "sit up and begin to take notice of the scrap across the
+water."
+
+Laurence was for compulsion; Ralph for a vigorous revival of his
+Majesty's Opposition; and Helen was a keen advocate of both.
+Skilfully and politely, she slipped away from the vexed question of
+curtains and pictures to the more congenial occupation of
+reconstructing the Government, and "rounding up" the slackers who
+were obviously "waiting to be fetched."
+
+"Nothing short of _that_," she concluded in her emphatic fashion,
+"will disturb their casual conviction that England can beat Germany
+with one hand tied behind her back."
+
+It was a subject on which she was apt to wax hot, even a trifle
+caustic; but never, since Wilton's arrival, had she spoken with such
+vehemence as she felt suddenly moved to do by sheer irritation at his
+womanish fiddle-faddling.  For a while he listened in mute amazement,
+with the bird-like tilt of his head and eyes riveted on her face.
+Then, as she paused to empty her cup, he leaned a little towards her.
+
+"But _dear_ Lady Forsyth," he asked in his slowest, silkiest tones,
+"how, precisely, would you define that somewhat loose term of
+disparagement--a slacker?"
+
+"A self-regarding, spiritual sluggard," she answered him with a
+straight look.  "Is that precise enough?  The 'slacker'--so far as I
+understand the breed--would rather _not_ see England share the fate
+of Belgium; but would very _much_ rather not risk his life or limbs,
+to avert the calamity.  At best, he is afflicted with a disease
+called 'humanitarianism,' that would have men save their skins at the
+cost of everything that makes their skins worth saving.  At worst, he
+simply shirks his obvious duty for the sake of his own peace and
+comfort."
+
+"Hear, hear!" from the three convalescents and from Wilton a faint
+gasp of dismay.
+
+"_Eg_-zactly," he murmured automatically, fingering his remnant of
+cake.  "But that sounds ... _just_ a little sweeping; not to say
+severe."
+
+With a sigh of impatience, Lady Forsyth rose and went over to the
+fire.  Her cheeks were flushed; but her hands and feet were cold.
+
+"Certain sorts of people _require_ a dash of severity," she remarked
+to the room at large.  "Browning was right.  There are some souls
+'terror must burn the truth into'...  A good many in these islands,
+high and low."
+
+Wilton nervously cleared his throat.  "Ah--Browning," he struck in,
+evading the issue.  "A stimulating writer.  Rather too rough and
+obscure for my taste."
+
+"That's not the point."  She dismissed his taste impatiently.
+Interruption annoyed her when she was well under way.  "The point is
+terror burning the truth into people, who have a positive genius for
+shutting their eyes to it--if it's likely to make them uncomfortable.
+One wonders, will even these unmasked Germans convince our
+intellectuals that evil in all its forms is a deadly reality, to be
+fought and conquered; not a sort of moral indigestion to be cured
+with sugar-coated tabloids!  Between science and civilisation, we've
+exploded hell and chloroformed the devil.  And if we're properly
+advanced, we can't even commit sin.  We are merely the victims of
+environment or inherited tendencies.  Nothing like the polysyllable
+steam-roller for flattening out awkward facts!  Take the case of the
+slacker.  What does his argument amount to in Saxon English?  'I
+don't see the force of risking my life for my country.'  But deck it
+out in polysyllables, and you can conjure it into quite a lofty
+sentiment.  You try, Mr. Wilton, in your next sermon----"
+
+"Hullo, here comes Sheila's scarlet spider."  Ralph's voice from the
+window-seat broke the thread of her monologue and saved the slightly
+staggered curate from further discomfiture.  "A wire for one of us!"
+
+Lady Forsyth started.  "Keith!" was her instant thought.  "Ralph,
+dear, run and get it," she said.  "Hester's out."
+
+An odd silence fell till he reappeared.  "For you," he said, "and the
+imp's waiting."
+
+With a sudden leap of conviction, she tore it open and read: "Sir
+Mark Forsyth is alive and wounded but safe.  I have letter from
+France.  Posting to-night."
+
+It was signed by Mark's bootmaker at Winchester.  But, at the moment,
+her brain took in nothing beyond the incredible fact.  Mark was
+there--across the Channel.  She could go to him....
+
+"Any answer?" Ralph asked.
+
+She shook her head.  Then, suddenly, she looked up, with a strange,
+uncertain smile.  "Mark is alive--safe!" she said, an uncontrollable
+note of triumph in her low voice.
+
+She saw Sheila rise; heard disjointed sounds from the four men: then
+a rush of tears blinded her, and she hurried out of the room.
+
+
+It was some time before Sheila joined her.  She, who had shared all,
+knew that the mother's first ecstasy of reprieve was a matter between
+her own soul and God.  And Sheila herself found it hard to speak
+calmly of this great news.  The blaze of it made one realise what a
+shadowy thing hope had been at best.
+
+She found Lady Forsyth sitting over her fire drowned fathoms deep in
+the wonder of it all.  Undried tears gleamed on her cheeks and the
+precious telegram lay unheeded on the floor.
+
+Sheila knelt down by her and they clung together in silence.  Then,
+casually, Sheila picked up the telegram.  "I want--to see it
+written," she murmured with a sudden stab of recollection.  "But--why
+Jevons?"
+
+"That's the mystery.  Why should he get a letter about my boy?  And
+what's wrong with Mark that he didn't write himself?  Oh my dear,
+what marvels of perversity we are!  Here have I kept myself going for
+weeks by the firm belief that we must get him back: and now it's
+come, I'm a shivering sceptic.  I have almost to pinch myself to make
+sure it's not a dream."
+
+But Sheila standing by her was reading the telegram over and over.
+"It's no dream," she said.  "It's--a miracle.  I suppose we can't
+wire to Mr. Macnair or Colonel Munro till you get that letter.
+But--there's Bel."
+
+"Yes--there's Bel."  A pause.  "I hope the shock of joy will unfreeze
+her.  She'd better come here, if she can.  Get me a form, darling,
+and see if the men are happy.  I'd like to sit here peacefully till
+dinner--and think about my boy."
+
+Sheila dropped a kiss on her hair and vanished: not for long.
+
+"Quite happy, are they?  _All_ of them?" Lady Forsyth asked when the
+wire had been despatched.  "I'm pricked with faint compunction over
+the curate man.  He roused the devil in me with his hot bath and his
+art curtains.  But I didn't mean to hit quite so hard...."
+
+Sheila's eyes twinkled.  "I'm afraid we all loved it!  And you
+needn't be pricked with compunction, Dearest.  I found him on the
+drawing-room sofa, quite audibly asleep, with his mouth open!"
+
+"There are _some_ souls...!" Helen confided to the blazing logs.
+
+
+That evening was the liveliest that the convalescents had experienced
+at Wynchcombe Friars.  After dinner Lady Forsyth played to them for
+the first time.  Music was the one adequate outlet for her pent-up
+emotion.  She chose only triumphal themes and she played them
+triumphantly.  Let her audience understand if they chose.
+
+Seldon, ensconced in an armchair by the fire, listened with rapt
+attention, his neat profile cut like a cameo on the oak panelling
+beyond.  Sheila sat near him on the wide fender-stool, absorbed in
+her own thoughts.
+
+Suddenly when the music was loudest he leaned towards her over the
+arm of his chair.
+
+"Miss Melrose," he said in a low voice.  "Do tell me, who is--Bel?
+Is she a connection?  What's her other name?"
+
+Sheila started and looked round.
+
+"Alison," she said, "Bel Alison.  She's engaged--to Sir Mark.  Why?
+D'you know her?"
+
+"I seem to remember the name," he answered evasively.  "A tall,
+striking-looking girl?"
+
+"Yes."  His manner pricked Sheila's curiosity; but she did not repeat
+her question.
+
+"Coming to-morrow, is she?"
+
+"Yes," Sheila said again; and this time a wild possibility darted
+through her brain.
+
+Seldon, frowning and biting his lip, still scrutinised the fire.
+"Sounds like a girl--I met one summer," he remarked casually.  "Odd
+if it is the same.--And she's to be mistress of all this?  She's in
+luck.  Sir Mark, I take it, is a very fine fellow?"
+
+"A very fine fellow," the girl answered; and for a few minutes Seldon
+seemed to ponder her statement.  Then, with an odd jerk of his head,
+he abruptly changed the subject.
+
+"A treat to hear playing like that.  What with gramaphones and
+things, people won't be bothered nowadays.  And she's got such a
+ripping touch."
+
+"She's inspired to-night," Sheila said, glancing towards the slender
+upright figure in the dull blue teagown, shot through with gold,
+woven for her by Mark's people and designed by Mark himself.
+
+Seldon, it was evident, would say no more about Bel.  That in itself
+lent colour to the wild possibility that Sheila hoped, for Mark's
+sake, was too wild to be true.  The bare chance of it so troubled her
+that long after she had soothed Lady Forsyth into a deep sleep, she
+lay wide-eyed, in her own little room, wondering and dreading and
+piecing things together; wishing fervently that Seldon had held his
+tongue.
+
+Well, to-morrow she would see them together; and Bel, ignorant of Mr.
+Seldon's anonymous confidences, would almost certainly give herself
+away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+  "She gave no vine of Love to rear,
+  Love's wine drank not; yet bent her ear
+  To themes of Love no less."
+                                        MEREDITH.
+
+
+Next morning, in spite of her vigil, Sheila appeared earlier than
+usual in Lady Forsyth's room, to share tea and letters--especially
+letters.  And there failed not the envelope with the Winchester
+postmark.
+
+The bootmaker--respectfully amazed and delighted--begged to enclose a
+letter in French whose contents he had learnt from a Belgian refugee.
+It was written in Sœur Colette's fine clear hand; and beneath her
+modest signature a circle of sealing-wax bore the Forsyth crest.
+
+At sight of it the mother's tears started.  "Oh, I'm an idiot.  Read
+it to me, darling," she said handing the letter to Sheila.  And
+Sheila read in a low steady voice, the plain tale, simple yet
+astonishing, of Mark's threefold reprieve from death: of the mystery
+that surrounded him till Sœur Colette--who attributed every detail
+to the goodness of God and the Holy Virgin--discovered his name and
+regiment written inside his brogues; of the victorious French Army
+that returned at last, scattering and annihilating "les Boches" so
+that there was scant time for collecting sick prisoners or indeed for
+anything but a hurried retreat upon stronger positions.
+
+"But already," continued the writer, "M. le docteur had of his wisdom
+made them to suppose that Monsieur was without hope of recovery.  May
+the good God forgive him that deception so well-intended.  Possessing
+no other address, I venture to report these matters to M. le
+cordonnier, trusting that they may yet arrive to the relations of
+Monsieur Sir Forsyth who is of a courage and patience unsurpassed.
+Having power to move his left hand he has pressed with his own ring
+the wax one has spilt upon this page for a message to Madame his
+mother.  If one should come soon and take him to Paris, M. le docteur
+has great hope that in time he will walk and speak as before."
+
+Thus Sœur Colette, in her saintly simplicity; and neither of the
+women, who read and read again the letter she had written, with tears
+and prayers, caught a glimpse of the idyll that had saddened and
+glorified her life.  They had far too much, on their own account, to
+think of, to give thanks for, and to do.
+
+"Oh, if I could only pack up and start this instant!" was the cry of
+Helen's impatient spirit.  "And he, lying paralysed, all these
+weeks--my poor darling!"
+
+The first obvious move was a telegram to Keith, care of Colonel
+Munro, whom he kept informed of his movements: more telegrams to
+relations and friends; and--a letter to Mark.  Life was suddenly real
+again; purposeful, genuinely worth living.
+
+Soon after breakfast came a wire from Bel.  "Thanks for splendid
+news.  Arriving Westover 4.15."
+
+"I'll take the car out and meet her," Sheila announced with decision.
+
+Something in her tone made Lady Forsyth look up from the letter she
+was writing.  "Very sweet of you, my lamb," she said: but Sheila knew
+that sweetness had nothing whatever to do with it.  "Crown your
+virtue by giving his Reverence a lift into Wynchmere as you go
+through.  We shall scarcely escape tears at parting!  The fleshpots
+and the title and the joy of casually airing it can be trusted to
+eclipse all my egregious remarks."
+
+It seemed she was not far wrong.  After lunch Wilton hovered about
+like a tame rook, murmuring plaintive platitudes, lamenting his
+inability to put into adequate words ... and so on and so forth.  But
+at the last, spurred by inexorable sounds without, he found, in one
+breath, the adequate word and the courage to speak it.
+
+"_Dear_ Lady Forsyth," he murmured bowing over her hand.  "It has
+been such a privilege.  Quite a liberal education.  So hard to tear
+oneself away!  At lunch I was wishing--forgive the audacity--that I
+had the luck to be your son.  Then I need never go away."
+
+"My son?"  She started and changed colour: at that moment it was the
+last audacity she felt disposed to forgive.  "If you were my son, Mr.
+Wilton, you'd have to go a good deal farther than Wynchmere.  I
+should send you straight out to France--where you ought to be now."
+
+The startled curate drew back as if from a blow.  "But my cloth--my
+sacred calling----"
+
+She gave him a direct look.  "It may surprise you," she said.  "But I
+have looked carefully through the ordering of priests and the
+Thirty-nine Articles and I can find there no admonition whatever that
+churchmen shall abstain from bearing arms in defence of their
+country.  And look at the French priests.  Hundreds of them in the
+ranks; lifting the Church, by their manliness and courage, to a
+position it has not occupied since the Revolution.  I know several
+clergymen, Scottish and English, with the colours.  And I am quite
+_sure_ their sacred calling has suffered no stain because they have
+bayoneted a few Germans and quitted themselves like men.  They will
+preach sermons worth hearing, those brave fellows ... if they win
+through.  It's men, real men, that we need if the Church is to regain
+her lost hold on us all."
+
+"_Eg_-zactly," he agreed inadvertently, to her huge delight.
+
+"Well then--why not go out and qualify----?"
+
+"Impossible, dear lady, impossible."  He reddened distressfully
+lifting one long hand as if to ward off the devil in person.
+"Others--I would not presume to judge.  Every man is ultimately
+responsible to the Inner Light.  And _my_ conscience would never
+permit----"
+
+"That settles it," she interposed briskly, without a touch of
+flippancy.  "We can't start a full-dress debate on the doorstep; Miss
+Melrose has a train to meet.  I hope the hot water and the cooking
+and the curtains will leave nothing to be desired.  I mean it," she
+added with her kindest smile, and handed him over to Sheila, who had
+found some difficulty in dispensing with the services of Ralph.
+
+Wilton was abnormally silent all the way to Wynchmere; and Sheila was
+absorbed in her driving and her own thoughts.  At intervals the
+pensive curate glanced at her under his eyelids; appraised her
+charming profile--a shade too resolute for his taste--and her capable
+handling of the machine.  Yet his thoughts were practical rather than
+sentimental.  Thanks to a natural genius for gleaning personal items,
+he already knew that Sheila Melrose possessed advantages which
+distinctly enhanced her charming profile.  In the common phrase of
+parish gossips there was "plenty of money going" at Westover Court.
+Mrs. Melrose, he learnt, was a Burlton, daughter of a great steel
+magnate in the North; married, by some queer freak of fate, to George
+Melrose, the distinguished antiquarian.  Melrose, himself,--shy and
+clever, drowned fathoms deep in his researches--appeared to spend
+most of his time in Egypt, where Sheila had stayed with him on her
+way from India.  Not even the War, nor a very real affection for his
+youngest daughter, had power to lure him back to the uncongenial
+atmosphere of the old home he had once so loved that, in order to
+save it, he had married money.  Then, too late, a lucky speculation
+had considerably increased his own private means; and, as Westover
+Court had become a stronghold of the entire Burlton family, he had
+found it expedient to spend a good deal of his time elsewhere.
+
+Wynchmere had duly given the new curate its garbled history of the
+Melrose _ménage_; but for Wilton the chief point of interest lay in
+the assurance that all three daughters would be well dowered; and
+this one was an open favourite at Wynchcombe Friars.  Decidedly, if
+it came to business, the youngest Miss Melrose would do very well.
+
+The glow of this secret decision made his limp handshake at parting a
+degree less limp than usual: but Sheila wore thick driving gloves and
+was visibly in a hurry to be gone.
+
+At Westover station she annexed Bel--radiant, friendly, and eager for
+further news.
+
+"Sheila--is it stark true?" she asked as they spun along between bare
+hedges.  "Have you got the mysterious letter?  Who wrote it?  Please
+tell everything."
+
+And Sheila told--keeping her eyes on the wheel.
+
+At the word "paralysis" Bel started.
+
+"Oh, how horrible!  So disfiguring.--I suppose Lady Forsyth will go
+out to him.  And she believed it all the time.  Isn't she a wonder?
+_I_ can't, even now.  Not till I see him and feel him----"
+
+There flashed a vivid memory of her first drive along this familiar
+road, when Mark had sat beside her in the August sunlight: and she
+fell silent, thinking her own thoughts.
+
+Sheila had just braced herself to a casual mention of Seldon, when
+Bel spoke again.
+
+"Any wounded at Wynchcombe Friars just now?"
+
+"Yes, three of them.  Ralph--almost well.  Mona's brother, Mr.
+Laurence.  Such a delightful boy; and Mr. Seldon, an Indian civilian.
+Came over as a despatch-rider----"
+
+"Seldon?  From India?"  It was enough.  Sheila knew now that the wild
+possibility was true.  "A thin dark man, is he?  Clever and rather
+good-looking?"
+
+"Yes.  Have you been in India?"
+
+Sheila looked round now, curious to see if Bel were the least put out
+by the reappearance of a lover she had cruelly hurt and deceived.  On
+the contrary she seemed interested and rather amused.  "No.  I met
+him on leave in Cornwall, some years ago.  Odd he should turn up
+again here!"
+
+"Not so very," Sheila said with her small smile.  "You see, he's a
+friend of mine.  I met him in India and we've corresponded ever
+since.  Then he came over to France: and I found him one day among
+the wounded at Boulogne."
+
+"Oh, _you_ know him too!"  Bel's amusement increased visibly.  "D'you
+like him?  I thought him rather a poor specimen."
+
+"The war has brought out all the best in him," Sheila remarked.
+Every moment she grew angrier with Bel; angrier, and more resolute to
+get at the truth--in good time.  For months she had been sitting down
+severely on her own deep-seated jealousy and pain; and this final
+proof of Bel's utter unworthiness, coming at such a moment, seemed to
+shake the foundations of things.
+
+Some women, it appeared, were privileged to go about the world sowing
+pain and reaping adulation: and Sheila, whose creed was acceptance,
+was still young enough to be badly tripped up, on occasion, by the
+bewildering injustices of life.  It was her private opinion that Bel
+deserved to be hurt, and probably never would be.  Not that she
+consciously sat in judgment.  There was nothing of the prig in her
+composition.  But, because her heart was the biggest thing about her,
+she held peculiarly sacred the hearts of men, that, for Bel and her
+kind, are so many counters on the gaming-tables of life.  Small,
+contained creature though she was, sins of passion or emotion were
+the sins she could most readily understand and condone.  It was Bel's
+smiling, unassailable selfishness that alienated and enraged her.
+And Mark, with his fiery sensitive spirit, at the mercy of such an
+one for life!  The thought of it was almost more than she could bear.
+
+For Bel, herself, Sheila was simply a rather sweet person who did not
+count in the least.  Nothing counted much, at the moment, except Mark
+and his unbelievable resurrection.  Yet she had no intention of going
+out with Lady Forsyth.  That was not her way.  Certain of his coming,
+she could wait.  Meantime her resurgent spirit, hungry for enjoyment,
+saw possibilities in the Seldon coincidence that might serve to pass
+the time.
+
+She turned smilingly to the suppressed volcano at her side.
+
+"I say, Sheila, does Mr. Seldon know I'm coming?  Does he know ...
+I'm engaged to Mark?"
+
+"Yes.  We spoke of it last night."
+
+"Did he say anything about meeting me before?"
+
+"He seemed to remember the name," Sheila answered casually.  It was
+the truth, if not the whole truth; and she could not resist the
+chance of administering a flick to Bel's omnivorous vanity.  The
+flick told.  It also goaded Bel into further revelations than she had
+intended.
+
+"I fancy he'll remember more than my name when we meet," she
+remarked, looking out over the sodden December landscape.  "Not so
+very long ago I was accused of having spoilt his life and broken his
+heart: a tougher organism than sentimental people care to admit!"
+
+Sheila betrayed no surprise.  She would not condescend to feign
+ignorance.  "You could hardly expect him to parade a broken heart in
+the circumstances," was all she said.
+
+Bel laughed.  "Well hit!  What a practical person you are.  I merely
+thought he might have told you, as you correspond and are evidently
+great friends."
+
+Sheila did not answer.  She was skilfully manipulating a sharp turn
+into the town.  Bel watched her in frank admiration.
+
+"How awfully well you drive!  Who taught you?"
+
+"Mr. Macnair."
+
+"Oh!  _I_ always feel that man being horribly critical underneath.
+But you're evidently privileged!  Is _he_--another great friend?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Mark, too!  You've quite a talent in that line."
+
+Sheila felt the light scratch under the velvet tone, and turned her
+clear eyes full on Bel.
+
+"You mean--they don't fall in love with me?  Well, sometimes
+friendship is the higher compliment."
+
+"Sour grapes!" reflected Bel.  Aloud she said sweetly: "It's a
+compliment no man has ever paid me yet.  And I can do very well with
+... the other thing.  Even if it results in only seeming to remember
+my name!"
+
+That was all for the moment.  But it set Sheila thoroughly on edge;
+nor were matters improved by Bel's behaviour throughout the evening.
+
+Seldon she greeted without a shadow of embarrassment; asked after
+mutual acquaintances in Cornwall; smilingly held his gaze a moment;
+then, as it were, consigned him to Sheila, who missed no item of the
+by-play between them.
+
+Later on, though ostensibly devoting herself to Lady Forsyth and
+young Laurence, Bel never for a moment allowed Seldon to be unaware
+of her.  It was a situation that appealed to all the actress in her;
+and the whole performance was a piece of finished coquetry, perfect
+of its kind.
+
+As for Seldon, he clung to Sheila with nervous tenacity, as a man
+might cling to a talisman against witchcraft; but his eyes and ears
+and the back of his mind were intent on Bel.  He talked in spasms and
+his self-consciousness was more pronounced than ever.  Painfully he
+recalled the Seldon of Indian days: and before the evening was over
+Sheila had arrived at wondering could he, with open eyes, revert to
+the girl who had used him so ill?  Were his love and friendship for
+herself such mere card-houses that they could tumble to earth at a
+flicker of Bel's long eyelashes, a careless word from her lips?
+
+The bare supposition was unflattering to say the least.  More; it was
+a shock to her young, ardent faith in human nature.  She had seen
+this man rise--in a measure through love of her--above his lesser
+self.  She had been proud of him and for him.  Though he could marry
+neither of them, he was hers in a very special sense; and Bel had no
+right to him whatever.  But the heart, like the tongue, can no man
+tame; and Seldon's whole manner to Sheila that evening conveyed the
+mute attestation: "I am yours.  Yet, if she beckons, I follow in
+spite of myself."
+
+It was not a heroic confession.  It angered Sheila, even while it
+moved her to pity.  She hated the whole distracting affair: and felt
+thankful that Lady Forsyth was incapable of perceiving anything but
+the one supreme fact: thankful, even, that she would soon be gone.
+
+
+Next day came a telegram from Keith bidding her get a passport to
+Boulogne whither he would bring Mark--Authority permitting--in the
+Forsyth-Macnair ambulance car.  And for the time being, all lesser
+matters were in abeyance.
+
+Bel decided not to go; and Lady Forsyth was too relieved to press the
+point.  Sheila did most of the packing and dropped a few secret,
+rebellious tears into Mark's valise.  It hurt her bitterly that she
+could not go too and complete the old happy quartet that had seemed
+linked indissolubly till Bel stepped into the picture and upset
+everything.  She had a knack of unsettling things whenever she
+appeared; and that without seeming to lift a finger.  In a minor way,
+she was doing it again; doing it admirably; while Sheila anointed
+Mark's familiar ties and shirts with her tears.
+
+Quite incidentally it occurred to Lady Forsyth that five young people
+could not, without scandalising the proprieties, be left entirely to
+themselves.
+
+"It's ridiculous nonsense," she declared with a touch of impatience.
+"And everyone's far too busy to be bothered.  Bel, how about your
+Harry?  Not married, of course, but still----"
+
+Bel smiled.  "The more the safer, I suppose?  It's quite a pretty
+problem in arithmetic: how many women, unmarried, equal one woman,
+married?  Harry could come to-morrow, I think, for a few days."
+
+"Good.  And Mrs. Laurence might manage the week end.  Wire at once,
+dear, will you?  Say I leave this afternoon.  I can't put off going
+for any Propriety-bogey in creation."
+
+So that afternoon she set out on her glad errand, armed with letters
+and messages of welcome to him who, for five weeks, had been counted
+dead by all except two brave women in England and the two men who
+sought him in France.
+
+Harry wired that she would come next day, and throughout that
+evening, Propriety--even in the person of Mrs. Clutterbuck--could
+have found nothing to cavil at in the behaviour of the five young
+people left temporarily unshepherded at Wynchcombe Friars.
+
+Only Sheila became increasingly aware of the effect wrought upon
+Seldon by Bel's discreetly veiled coquetry.  Beneath his restlessness
+and his half-defiant flippancy, she discerned the man's inner
+flutterings that affected her like the sight of a live butterfly
+impaled by a pin.  She herself was quieter than usual; but under the
+still surface her anger was rising steadily; and before dinner was
+over, she knew that she could not sleep to-night, till she had spoken
+her mind to Bel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+"It is the worst of crimes to feel life so cheap, and make it so
+expensive for other people."--MARY A. HAMILTON.
+
+
+Punctually at ten she made a move; and as she bid Seldon good night
+his eyes clung to her face with a pathetic mixture of apology and
+appeal.  It needed only that look to stiffen her resolve; though the
+last thing she wanted at the moment was a quarrel with Bel.  She
+hoped it might not amount to that; but she felt half afraid of her
+own inner tumult as she knocked lightly at Bel's door.
+
+She found the girl already half undressed, sitting before her glass
+in a cream-coloured wrapper, her pale hair falling to her waist.  Her
+face so framed, looked engagingly young.  She was smiling frankly at
+her own image; and an aftermath of the same smile served as greeting
+to her unexpected visitor.
+
+"Come for a talk?  How nice of you!"
+
+She indicated a chair near the fire; and Sheila, glad of the warmth,
+set one silver-shod foot on the fender.  But she remained standing--a
+slim grey figure with a knot of turquoise blue at her waist and a
+blue fillet threaded through the dark cloud of her hair.
+
+So, for the first time, they seriously confronted one another, these
+two----
+
+"I'm not so sure," said Sheila slowly, "that you'll think it nice of
+me when you hear what I have to say."
+
+Bel's eyes expressed polite enquiry.
+
+"Nothing very formidable, I hope?  And, for Heaven's sake, don't be
+tragic.  I've had enough tragedy, all these weeks, to last me a
+lifetime."
+
+"So have ... most of us," Sheila put in quietly.  "And there's no
+question of tragedy, for any one, if you'll only leave poor Mr.
+Seldon alone."
+
+"Oh, that's all, is it?  Hands off your property, in fact?"
+
+"Nothing of the sort."  Sheila's temper flared up, do what she would.
+"Hands off a man who has suffered _more_ than enough on your account
+already.  I think if you realised how much----"
+
+"Suffered--has he?  And poured it all into your sympathetic ears?  I
+rather suspected he was gone on you."
+
+"Well, then--why can't you let him be?  Isn't one splendid lover
+enough for you?"
+
+"To possess--certainly," Bel answered with her invincible
+good-humour.  "That man Seldon's a mere invertebrate.  But he's
+clever, in his own way; and he amuses me.  If you don't want him for
+yourself, why in the world d'you bother about him?"
+
+"Simply because he's a human being and he's made a plucky fight
+against things, and--he's my friend."
+
+"Why not mine too?"
+
+"Friendship is not one of your gifts, Bel.  The only kindness you can
+do him is--what I said: let him alone.  He mayn't be worth very much.
+But he is worth something ... now.  Even you'd admit that if you'd
+seen him as I did, last autumn: a wretched cynical man with no heart
+in his work.  Drinking too, from sheer loneliness and ill-health.
+And so obviously needing a woman in his life that it was hard to
+refuse him.  In the end--that I mightn't think too badly of him--he
+told me about that summer in Cornwall.  And ... to think it should
+have been you!"
+
+Something in her tone drew Bel's eyes to her face.
+
+"Well, what harm?  I didn't commit murder.  I refused him--as you
+did.  That's all."
+
+"It's _not_ all," Sheila flashed out.  "Bel--don't prevaricate.  He
+... he told me everything."
+
+Bel started and a faintly hostile gleam showed in her eyes.  Then,
+very deliberately, she combed back a lock that had fallen half over
+her face.
+
+"May I ask--what 'everything' amounted to?"
+
+Sheila moistened her lips.  "Well ... the way you simply made use of
+him to secure that other man ... the married one.  Mr. Seldon heard
+afterwards that you--went away with him.  That he didn't believe,
+except when he felt bitter enough to believe anything.  Bel--_is_ it
+true?  Any of it?  I _must_ know."
+
+She spoke with unguarded urgency; and Bel turned clear hard eyes upon
+her.  The hostile gleam was no longer faint.
+
+"Why must you know what is entirely my own affair?  In order to tell
+Lady Forsyth, or Mark, and make trouble between us, after all I've
+just been through?  Model of virtue though you are, I believe you'd
+give your beautiful violet eyes to put Mark out of love with me.  But
+you never will.  Men don't easily leave off loving me.  Mr. Seldon's
+a case in point.  I understand one side of them.  And I understand it
+thoroughly.  Mark's a bit straight-laced about some things.  But he's
+tremendously a man.  And he'll love _me_--worthless me--to the end of
+the chapter, whatever I may have done, or do!"
+
+Sheila--amazed, disgusted and angrier than ever--had listened so far
+without interruption, simply because she could not trust herself to
+speak.  At that moment she hated Bel, as she had never hated any
+fellow-being; and her white Northern anger would rather have vented
+itself in blows than words.  But, by this time, she had herself in
+hand.
+
+"_I_ tell Mark?" she said, on a note of concentrated scorn, ignoring
+the implication of her motive.  "It's for you to tell him--whatever
+there is to tell."
+
+Bel let out a breath of relief.  "Then he'll remain in blessed
+ignorance.  Men don't bore us with a recital of their pre-nuptial
+peccadilloes.  They've too much sense.  So why the dickens should we
+inflict ours on them?  I'm a modern woman, Sheila.  You're not: for
+all you're the younger.  And Mark himself isn't quite modern enough
+for my taste.  It's my only quarrel with him."
+
+She had quite recovered her complacence now.  Tilting her head, she
+swept the brush through her long fine hair: and Sheila stood watching
+her a moment, fascinated unwillingly.
+
+Then with a small sigh she sat down.
+
+"I rather think," she said slowly, "that, if this war goes on long
+enough, it is you up-to-date people who will end in being
+out-of-date.  But Bel--" she hesitated.  Fuller knowledge would serve
+no purpose save to increase her own secret misery.  Yet, perversely,
+she still wanted to know.  "Are you admitting that what Mr. Seldon
+heard was true?"
+
+"Just true enough to be a spiteful lie," Bel answered enigmatically,
+discarding her brush and resting her bare arms on the table.  "What
+are you getting at, you determined little person?"
+
+"The truth--if I can.  I don't want to be unjust to you."
+
+"Very scrupulous!"
+
+Bel paused a moment, smiling at her own image ... considering....
+
+She was not given to verbal indiscretions, but she had her reckless
+impulses: and with Sheila she instinctively knew herself safe; knew
+that the truth demanded of her by this gentle, inexorable girl would
+hurt the more because--for very love of Mark and his mother--Sheila
+could be trusted to keep silence.  Hidden knowledge of that kind
+rankles and pricks, as Bel had learnt from experience; and her own
+galling sense of Sheila's finer loyalty and courage made the impulse
+to hurt and startle her irresistible.
+
+"Well," she said at length, turning from the glass, just as Sheila
+had given up hope of hearing more, "as you evidently won't play the
+sneak, I don't mind admitting that I had every intention of going off
+with that other man to Australia.  I was at a loose end: in the mood
+for any escape from humdrum England and sufficiently in love to be
+tempted.  It was Harry, with her awkward genius for rescue-work, who
+upset the apple-cart.  So my 'going off' with him amounted to no more
+than a week end together at the Lizard----"
+
+"Bel!"
+
+"Don't look so scarified, my dear innocent!  Heaps of the smartest
+girls do that sort of thing;--or rather did, in happier days than
+these.  And properly modern-minded men condoned it.  If you're for
+giving women freedom you can't tie them by the leg to the
+conventional moralities; and I wasn't going to take such a big risk
+without due consideration.  So he found rooms in a wee cottage at the
+Lizard and we went there--as temporary brother and sister--to do the
+considering.  He behaved beautifully; and, in the end, we decided to
+take the plunge.  Harry happened to be in Cornwall just then,
+tackling a troublesome 'case'.  So I arranged to go to her and join
+him in London when he wired.  But somehow, she suspicioned what was
+up: and as she believes in the emancipation of woman, I thought she'd
+take it reasonably.  However--she didn't; and there was the devil to
+pay.  I stood out against her; but she got at him and worked him up
+over his precious children.  So the great adventure fizzled out.  And
+Harry, having rescued me, has stuck to me ever since.  I suppose some
+of the fools at Bude heard we'd been to the Lizard and invented the
+rest.  There!  That's the extent of my villainy.  The whole thing's
+dead and gone, and you must admit I'd be a prize fool to tell Mark.
+He'd worry needlessly; and distrust me.  Also needlessly.  If any man
+can hold a woman, it's Mark.  Of course you think I'm not fit to
+black his boots.  I'm not.  I've told him so.  But it's me he wants,
+my dear,--good or bad.  Look here, though; not a word of all this to
+your 'Mums.'  She'd never forgive me."
+
+"No.  Never."  Sheila's cheeks were flushed and her lips set.  "I'm
+not sure that ... Mark would either.  I simply can't understand...."
+
+"Didn't suppose you would."  Bel smiled sweetly.  "You're too
+limited.  That's the trouble with you good people----"
+
+"Mark's not limited," Sheila broke out with sudden passion.  "No more
+is Mums.  Oh--and to think I told her, without knowing it ... the
+very day you two were out in the yacht----"
+
+"That day?  Really, this approaches the dramatic!  But never you give
+her the key to your story.  Promise!"
+
+Sheila sighed.  "I'm not likely to--for her sake; though it isn't
+easy keeping anything from Mums.  We're so close to each other all
+through."
+
+"Well, you must manage it somehow," Bel said with decision.  "And I
+expect you have your reserves even from her.  Have you ever, I
+wonder, let her realise that you're dead in love--with Mark?"
+
+"How _dare_ you!" Sheila broke in low and fiercely, "when I've tried
+to do you justice--to be friends----"
+
+She checked herself, rose, and turned her back on Bel, grasping the
+mantelpiece with her small fine hands.
+
+The girl surveyed her in genuine surprise.
+
+"I'm sorry," she said good-naturedly.  "One would think I'd accused
+you of stealing!  It's no sin!"
+
+Sheila swung round in an access of sheer impatience.  "This time it's
+_you_ who don't understand!  If that sort of thing's not sacred to
+you, it is to me----"
+
+Bel faintly raised her brows.  "No," she said, "I don't understand
+people who mix up falling in love with religion.  To me, it's simply
+the most thrilling amusement on earth.  Still, I'm sorry----"
+
+"You're not," Sheila retorted, unappeased.  "And I'd like you better
+if you said so, honestly.  _I'm_ sorry I ever came in here at all.
+Good night."
+
+She moved to the door; but softly and swiftly as a cat Bel sped after
+her and took her by the shoulder.
+
+"Sheila, my dear, don't be a high-flown little fool," she said in her
+seductive voice that was seldom wasted on a woman.
+
+"Oh, let me alone, I'm tired," Sheila murmured, and shook off the
+detaining hand, only to find it slipped through her arm.
+
+"Come and make it up.  Then I'll let you go," Bel cooed invitingly.
+
+It was detestable; but Sheila was genuinely tired and too disgusted
+for further argument.  Unresisting, and unresponsive, she allowed
+herself to be drawn back to the fire and gently pulled down into the
+chair.
+
+"You're such a lovesome morsel of dignity and reserve," Bel went on,
+kneeling beside her and warming her hands.  "It's quite an
+achievement to have drawn you out a little.  I can't let you shut up
+again with a click.  Besides, we must be friends _now_!"
+
+Sheila, who was hardly attending, did not grasp the import of that
+last remark.
+
+"I'm not altogether depraved, you know."
+
+"I never said you were."
+
+"But you thought so."
+
+Sheila merely shook her head.  She had no further desire to discuss
+Bel or her very mixed attributes; but, for Bel, there was no more
+congenial subject on earth.
+
+"You _did_ think so," she insisted, with untroubled conviction.  "But
+I do try to be decent, up to my lights.  Can't help it--can I?--if
+mine are candles and yours are stars?  And I admit this beastly war
+has demoralized me badly.  Your Mums talks of it as a 'refiner's
+fire'; but ... I don't know.  That sort of thing doesn't agree with
+everyone.  It may exalt the good; but ... I rather think it makes the
+bad worse."
+
+Sheila nodded.  "It finds us all out.  It's burning away the husks of
+life and forcing us to be our real selves.--_My_ real self, at this
+moment," she added lightly, "is a mere log of weariness.  I must go
+now."
+
+"Very well--go.  Good night, dear."
+
+Bel put up her face for a kiss; but Sheila was on her feet again.
+"_Will_ you leave Mr. Seldon alone?" she said returning to her
+original attack.
+
+"I'll try--just to please you!  But you can't blame _me_ if the man's
+a mere weather-cock."
+
+"I do blame you--all along the line," Sheila answered with quiet
+obstinacy; and at last effected her escape.
+
+But for all her weariness, sleep was long in coming.  Though her lids
+were heavy, her brain was wide awake and haunted distractingly by
+visions of Bel; her smiling self-complacence, her graceful, studied
+poses, her serene assurance--cruelly emphasised--that no revelation
+of her intrinsic worthlessness would affect her dominion over Mark.
+
+Was that true, Sheila wondered, feeling of a sudden very ignorant and
+limited--as Bel had said?  Would it make no difference even if he
+knew all?  Was a man's love so entirely a mixture of infatuation and
+passion that the soul of a woman counted for next to nothing?
+
+Personally, Sheila did not believe it; but she was too young, too
+untravelled in the heart's byways, to feel secure in that belief.
+She only saw Mark, her god among men, lured and held by this
+elf-maiden of a girl; fair without, hollow within.  Mr. Seldon,
+too--in spite of all he had suffered, in spite of genuine love for
+herself--seemed powerless to hold his own against Bel.  And was it
+only Bel?  Was it only Mark and Seldon?  Or, was their private tangle
+simply part of the cruel, primitive essence of things?  Sheila lying
+there in the dark, pictured hundreds of Bels dragging down hundreds
+of Marks and Seldons; and her protective, mother-tenderness for the
+masculine half of creation, raged impotently against it all.  One
+heard so much, in these outspoken days, about men ruining women.  Was
+there not fully as much to be said about women ruining men?  Between
+sleep and waking her mind dwelt long on this side of a question that
+touched her so nearly.  The mixed emotions of the last few days and
+the need to keep them hidden, had put a severe strain on her.  And
+closer contact with Bel seemed to have rubbed the bloom off life; to
+have shaken her faith in the nature of things----
+
+Her heart, in its loneliness, yearned for the dear comrade-woman;
+mother, sister, and friend in one; who could light up even the dark
+places of life with the fire of her brave enthusiasm.  Soon they
+would all be together, they three: while she, who was intrinsically
+one with them, remained out in the cold; and must so remain--as Bel
+had smilingly assured her--to the end of the chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+  "And the land shall leave me or take, and the Woman shall
+        take me or leave me....
+  But Life shall hold me alive, and Death shall never deceive me,
+  As long as I walk in England, in the lanes that let me pass."
+                                                    CHESTERTON.
+
+
+It was accomplished.  The faith and courage of Helen Forsyth had
+reaped their due reward; and they three were together at last.  But
+not yet under one roof.  The instant Mark emerged from supposed
+extinction, Authority claimed him; and Helen rebelled a little,
+inevitably against cast-iron regulations that withheld her from
+taking immediate possession of her own.
+
+Meanwhile she was thankful, on reaching the hospital, to find him in
+a small room with two other empty beds.  Ignoring the chair that had
+been set for her, she knelt beside him, her face radiating a silent
+benediction.
+
+Prostrate, paralysed, his reddish hair almost hidden by the cap-like
+bandage, he lay there smiling his queer, crooked smile and his lashes
+were wet with tears.  When one or two of them escaped and ran down
+his cheek, she wiped them away with her handkerchief and leaning over
+him kissed his eyelids.
+
+He frowned as if vexed at his own weakness, but she shook her head.
+
+"We needn't think shame of them," she said, for her own were falling.
+"It's natural.  Just the blessed reaction.  Don't you remember your
+favourite bit of Blake?  '"Damn" braces, "bless" relaxes.'"
+
+He smiled and pressed the hand he was clinging to in a fashion that
+recalled nursery days when some nightmare had so shaken him that he
+must hold her to make sure she was really there.  And to-day in this
+first, incredible hour of reunion, both felt unashamedly the childish
+need of that same reassurance.
+
+As his hand clung to hers, so her eyes clung to his face; and she saw
+now that he was making a desperate effort to speak.
+
+"No, no.  Bad for you, beloved," she said.  "I understand."
+
+But he would not be baulked of achievement; so strong was the current
+of new life in his veins.  And the words came at last; though, till
+they were out, he could not be sure whether sense or nonsense would
+emerge.
+
+"M-Mother--Mums--Home!"
+
+He brought them out, one by one; the last with triumphant emphasis
+and a stronger grip on her hand.
+
+"Yes--home the first possible minute," she assured him.  "A Nursing
+Home first, I'm afraid, for some time.  We've been wondering if we
+could put off the operation till we get across, as it's been delayed
+so long already.  The doctor here will see your head to-night and
+decide.  Of course half our best men are on the spot.  But it might
+keep us here weeks; and it's England you want, isn't it,
+darling,--and Bel?"
+
+He nodded, then suddenly releasing her hand, he put his left arm
+round her drawing her down to him....
+
+He was still holding her thus when the inexorable knock sounded on
+the door.
+
+
+That night it was decided that no harm would arise from a few days'
+delay: and Authority made arrangements accordingly; thrusting its
+ruthless arm once again between Helen and her son.
+
+For Mark, the mere exigencies of travelling emphasised his own
+vexatious helplessness, so that he understood, for the first time,
+something of the monkish attitude towards the body as a despised and
+hampering burden, rather than the beautiful disciplined servant of
+the spirit: but he was cheered beyond measure, by the sight and smell
+of the sea and the faint salt of it on his lips.  For the sea spelt
+England: and England--Bel; haloed and idealised, by this time, beyond
+the height of mortal woman.  While he lay on deck, delighting in
+wind-driven clouds and wind-tossed waters, memories crowded thick
+upon him....
+
+He hated losing sight of Keith and his mother even for a few hours:
+but his spirits rose steadily as the steamer, mysteriously
+safe-guarded, nosed her way toward the cliffs of Home.  It was still
+something of a wonder simply to be back again in the world of men; to
+see papers, as a matter of course, and to know more or less what was
+happening in that complex maze of trenches that now cleft France from
+the Vosges to the sea and changed the whole character of the War.
+Wounded officers, who had heard his story, came up to congratulate
+him and stayed to tell their own experiences.  It was good to hear
+them, though conversation was a distractingly one-sided affair: good
+to see, at last, the white cliffs of Kent, lit by a frail ray of
+winter sunshine; to glide up alongside the familiar quay with its
+cheering crowd, and to hear the rough speech of his own people.  It
+was better still to watch Keith pushing his way through them all,
+with a new uprightness and a squarer set of his shoulders, though the
+weeks of anxious search had left their mark on his rugged face.  And
+there, at his elbow, was "Mums" looking out eagerly for her "boy."
+
+His glimpse of them was brief but reassuring.  Then it was: "See you
+again in London": and for all he longed to speed straight to
+Wynchcombe Friars, the spell of the great grey city, throned upon its
+grey river, under a shifting pall of fog, penetrated, as never
+before, to the deep places of his imagination and his heart.
+
+The squalor of her back alleys was shrouded in darkness.  Her great
+thoroughfares were dimmed and emptier than of old.  As they drove
+away from the station, ragged flakes of snow and sleet were falling,
+and sharp against a blurred background loomed the stately splendour
+of the Abbey, the Houses, and Big Ben.  For him that shadowy mass of
+architecture possessed something of the sublimity and the aloofness
+of a great mountain range: and to-night, above all, it was a vision
+to lift the heart of one mere Englishman in thankfulness and
+praise....
+
+His destination was a Nursing Home for Officers in Park Lane--a
+paradise of ordered comfort and spotlessness and peace, where the hum
+of London's unresting voice sounded scarcely louder than the breaking
+of waves upon a stony shore.  Here his mother reappeared to bid him
+welcome and good night.  She had found rooms, she told him, in a
+hotel close by: and--yes, Bel was downstairs waiting for permission
+to come up.
+
+A quarter of an hour--no longer, the Nurse decreed.  And presently
+she came--a vision supremely satisfying to the eye.  Her simple,
+costly-looking coat and skirt were only a few shades darker than her
+hair.  On the brim of her beaver hat rested one yellow velvet flower;
+and she wore her amber beads over a yellow blouse.  Every detail had
+been carefully thought out; and the result, as she swiftly perceived,
+was very much to his taste.
+
+But this new Mark, who in a few short months had plumbed the heights
+and depths of human experience, craved more from the woman he had
+been sedulously glorifying than perfect finish of colour and form.
+And he could neither utter that craving nor appraise her with the
+sugar-plum compliments she loved.  He could only hold out his left
+hand and smile his crooked smile.
+
+An attempt to speak her name produced only such a strange, unnatural
+sound that she winced, ever so slightly, and the blood mounted to his
+face.
+
+Pricked with genuine pity and remorse she swept to him and caught his
+hand in both her own.
+
+"Darling--darling, don't try," she said in her cooing voice of
+tenderness.  "All in good time.  You're a wonder and a miracle to be
+here at all."
+
+Then--conquering his sudden painful shyness--he pulled her nearer;
+and, as she stooped to kiss him, captured her with his arm.  For the
+moment he asked nothing on earth but the sense of her living
+presence, the soft surrender of her lips.  Ecstasy flowed through
+him: short-lived, but fiery sweet----
+
+Loosening his hold, he pulled at her hat.  She sat back on the low
+chair facing him, removed the hat, and considered it with critical
+approval.
+
+"Bought for the occasion!" she explained.  "Rather a gem, isn't it?"
+
+He nodded, smiling, and fingering her beads; and she, suddenly
+slipping on to her knees, hid her face against him.
+
+Comforted exceedingly, he caressed her hair, and found courage for a
+fresh effort to speak.  This time he succeeded.
+
+"Beautiful--my Bel," he said slowly.
+
+She lifted her face and smiled at him: flushed but dry-eyed.
+"Yes--your Bel.  And you're going to shake off this horror as soon as
+possible; so that we can stick to our original date in spite of the
+war and its abominations.  There--I _must_ go.  I hear Nurse coming."
+
+She picked up the precious hat and stood before the over-mantel
+pinning it on.  Then she sighed.
+
+"Oh, _won't_ I be thankful when to-morrow's well over.  Sleep sound,
+darling, and I'll hope to see you in the morning."
+
+She kissed him again and vanished with a parting wave of the hand.
+And he lay a long while brooding on the day's events: his body too
+tired and his brain too full of impressions for coherent thought....
+
+
+Next morning, before the operation, he had a brief glimpse of her.
+Then his mother came, with Sheila--graver, paler, and, in some
+indefinable fashion, lovelier than he seemed to remember her.  But of
+late her image had been kept well in the background of his brain: and
+it smote him now the more poignantly as if in revenge.
+
+His hand closed firmly on hers and kept it imprisoned, while she
+stood there smiling at him through tears.  Yesterday's failure made
+him shy of attempting her name.  His gaze travelled from her face to
+his mother's and back again: and at last he spoke.
+
+"All my thanks--for Mums," he said and with an abrupt movement
+pressed her fingers to his lips.
+
+Then he released them and her pale face glowed.
+
+"Mark, don't thank me," she murmured.  "It was simply ... we were
+everything to each other, and it helped us to pull through.  Some day
+when she's not there, I'll tell you just how splendid she was.  And I
+want to hear about the Nun who wrote that letter.  She must be a
+jewel.  When all this is well over, we'll have a real long talk!"
+
+And Mark, more than ever enamoured of her musical voice, felt
+ridiculously elated at the prospect.
+
+Even this unsatisfactory lop-sided talk was over too soon: the
+eminent surgeon had arrived; and they must surrender him to the
+saving mercy of chloroform and the knife.  Is the whole enlightened
+race of man ever anything but ungrateful to these grim agents of
+salvation--at least until the beloved is safe out of the toils?
+
+Lady Forsyth's heart failed her badly as she stooped to kiss her son.
+But seeing the tense set of his lips, she spoke more bravely than she
+felt.
+
+"We've no reason at all to feel nervous, darling," she said low in
+his ear.  "I have Dr. Norton's word for it.  He says your condition's
+excellent and it ought to be quite plain sailing.  Keith is
+downstairs; and we won't leave till everything is well over.  God
+keep you safe--till I see you again."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+    "... No longer can I cast
+  A glory round about this head of gold.
+  Glory she wears, but springing from the mould;
+  Not like the consecration of the past."
+                                        MEREDITH.
+
+
+Dr. Norton proved no false prophet.
+
+Ten days later a very much revived Mark lay propped up in bed, while
+his mother sat by him, reading aloud, with emphatic relish, an
+outspoken article from the _National Review_.
+
+The loyal, universal confidence accorded, in August, to a Government
+mainly responsible for the failure to save Belgium, was already on
+the wane.  The political leopard, it appeared, could not change his
+spots even to preserve the British Empire from ruin.  Increasingly
+the note of criticism replaced the note of confidence: and to none
+did the change seem more ominous than to Helen Forsyth and her son.
+But for Mark, at the moment, no larger anxieties could cloud the joy
+of regaining his grip on life; of watching his mother's expressive
+face as she snapped the thread of a sentence to acclaim here or
+denounce there; till he longed for command of speech to lure her into
+one of their arguments that, for her, were at once an exasperation
+and a delight.
+
+Words came more readily now; but still at times, they played him
+ludicrous and disconcerting tricks, that were not always matter for
+mirth.  Bel--whose sense of humour was an uncertain quantity--too
+often winced at them; and then they covered him with confusion or
+pricked him to momentary irritation with her.  They would pass, he
+assured her, as the brain reasserted its full control.  The fact that
+it had proved to be slightly torn would retard things a little; but
+already he began to move his right hand; and in time recovery would
+be complete.  They must have patience: that was all.
+
+She proclaimed herself a miracle of patience; but there were days
+when he suspected her of being faintly bored; when her cheerfully
+persistent injunction to "hurry up and get well" had, to his
+sensitive ear, an almost metallic ring.  Work and the war and the
+strain of real suffering had wrought inner changes of which he became
+gradually aware.  The fine film of hardness, that dismayed Lady
+Forsyth, had not been altogether dissolved even by those first
+wonderful days of reunion; and now when she spoke of painful things,
+it was fatally apparent to Mark.
+
+He was, in fact, beginning to perceive the woman beneath the glamour;
+yet the glamour remained, in spite of disillusion.  Only when he
+looked into the future, or was tired and alone, the old distracting
+doubts assailed him.  For purposes of love-making she was inimitable.
+To that end, she was born.  For the larger purposes of wifehood,
+motherhood, companionship:--well, he had chosen her and he must take
+his chance----
+
+And all the while, he tried not to be aware that he was watching for
+one face, waiting for the "real long talk" she had promised him.
+Others came with increasing frequency; but she never reappeared.
+What was wrong?  The uncertainty grew distracting; but he felt
+reluctant to speak of her, these days; and when at last, he achieved
+a casual question to his mother, nervousness made it one of his
+failures.
+
+"Where is--become--Colette?" was the conundrum that emerged.
+
+"I wrote to her, dear," Lady Forsyth answered, pleased at his
+remembering.  "But I haven't heard yet."
+
+He frowned impatiently.  "D-damn it!  I mean--Sheila?"
+
+Then he learnt that her mother had claimed her for work at Westover
+Court, where a number of half convalescent nervous cases were in need
+of massage and Mrs. Melrose was short of skilled hands.
+
+"Sheila is quite wonderful at it," Lady Forsyth added.  "A genuine
+gift.  More magnetism than massage, I verily believe."
+
+Mark smiled at her enthusiasm, but asked no more questions.  His
+belated discovery must not be suffered to get out of hand....
+
+So far, he had been a very saint for patience.  But as vigour
+increased, irritability increased also.  In certain moods, the
+monotony, the dependence, the rubber-tyred routine of the hospital
+existence irked him to exasperation; and if he were alone with Keith
+he would let off steam, in an outburst of wholesome profanity.
+
+He did his best not to upset the women; but when a rare fine day
+flung panels of sunshine across the carpet and a frolic wind set the
+blind-tassels tap-tapping on the windows he felt like a caged thing.
+No garden here, as in France, where at least he could commune with
+trees and sky: and it was no garden he wanted now.  It was the road
+or the heather underfoot; the wilds of Hampshire, the rolling hills
+of his native Argyll; the sea-salt and heather-fragrant air that, for
+him, was like no other air on earth.  He wanted simply to walk and
+walk, world without end; only Bobs for company; Bobs, who most
+certainly was not forgetting his master, though he was accepting with
+true canine philosophy the homage paid him by the house of Russell.
+
+One night he dreamed of a kingly tramp among the hills and glens
+beyond Inveraig: Keith walked beside him, while Bobs put the fear of
+God into rabbits, visible and invisible.
+
+So vivid was the dream that he awoke with the dog's bark and Keith's
+voice sounding in his ears--woke to find he could scarcely shift
+himself in bed without help.  The contrast jarred so painfully that
+he cursed that delusive dream and decided to ask a few straight
+questions when Dr. Norton came, if his unruly member would permit.
+
+They had subjected him to a thorough overhauling the day before: but
+of information not a crumb could he extract from them, beyond vague
+encouragement and counsels of patience.  And this morning he fared
+very little better at Dr. Norton's hands.
+
+Norton was a lean tall man, with a humorous grey-green eye and, on
+occasion, a slightly caustic tongue.  He had taken a great liking to
+this virile, sensitive patient of his; who could thoroughly enjoy a
+joke at his own expense.  But, for all that, even Mark's direct
+demand for enlightenment failed to entice him from the cautious
+reserve of his kind.
+
+"My dear Sir Mark," he said, a gleam of sympathy in his grave eye,
+"it's hardly fair to fling leading questions at men whose reputation
+might not be worth an hour's purchase if they took to scattering
+inaccurate prophecies among their patients!  The damage to your brain
+was slight considering what it might have been.  With that
+well-seasoned puttee for a first aid bandage, it's a miracle you
+didn't die of septic meningitis within a week.  The main thing to
+guard against now is nerve trouble: if you let yourself get worried
+or uncontrolled.  With luck we shall have you out of bed in a week.
+But it may be more like a month before we can let you out of this."
+
+"Oh--_damn_!"  The "good old word of sin" seldom failed him at
+command.
+
+"Quite so," Norton remarked in his even voice.  "It's beastly having
+to lie up when you don't feel ill.  At the same time----"
+
+"Yes, of course--all those other chaps," Mark broke in, feeling
+suddenly very much ashamed of himself.  "Lucky enough getting
+away--intact.  I won't worry.  I'll--what's it they say out
+there--carry on!"
+
+
+But for some reason--whether because of his dream or because of Dr.
+Norton's guarded statement, that morning marked a point from which
+his hopefulness flagged; and the atmosphere about him seemed to
+suffer some indefinable change that gave Norton's injunction not to
+worry a slightly satirical tang.
+
+He became too keenly conscious of sympathy in the air; and the more
+tactfully it was implied, the worse it jarred.  His kind, attentive
+Nurse seemed suddenly kinder, more attentive.  His mother's lively
+humour sounded, at times, a trifle strained.  More than once he
+caught his mother gazing at him with a yearning wistfulness that he
+had either not noticed or not encountered before.  She managed to
+laugh it off; but it haunted him afterwards.
+
+Worse than all, he detected a fine shade of difference in Bel: at
+times a hint of constraint in her manner that he tried to dismiss as
+pure fantasy; at times, a passion of affection, very rare with her.
+There was less of mere lovers' talk between them now: and in the
+intervals, a paucity of common interests was revealed.  Very often
+she would read to him; and her visits were growing less regular.
+Some days she did not come at all; but sent a hurried affectionate
+note of excuses, lean diet for a man who needed companionship as
+never before.
+
+And Sheila, except for an occasional letter, appeared to have
+deserted him utterly.
+
+He put up with this state of things for a week: during which time his
+arm and speech made good progress towards recovery.  Then, suddenly,
+his patience gave out and he decided to tackle Keith, the only one
+whose bearing had suffered no perceptible change.
+
+Keith had been away for a few days at Montrose; but he was due in
+Town that morning: and he came straight from the station to Park Lane.
+
+He looked noticeably tired and worn: but Mark, just then, was
+fiercely intent on his own determination to be rid of half truths.
+
+"You--you damned lucky devil!" he broke out, holding on to Keith's
+hand and searching his eyes hungrily for knowledge withheld.
+"Scotland--mountains--the sea!  And I lie here--cursing.  How much
+taller--" the word eluded him and gesture failed--"Oh, _you_ know ...
+yard measure--longer?  They won't tell me.  Those infernal doctors.
+I'm--no coward.  Let's have the damage straight.  My legs ... rotten,
+useless.  Don't improve."
+
+Keith shook his head, pain unconcealed in his eyes.  Then he sat down
+by the bed and faced the ordeal thrust upon him.
+
+"The chances are--they won't--improve," he said slowly.  "That's the
+damage, Mark.  Your spine."
+
+Mark set his teeth and was silent.  The breath of tragedy had clean
+blown out the rushlight of impatience.  Keith hoped that Helen would
+never see him look as he looked then.
+
+"I gather they didn't mend matters ... dragging you to that farm,"
+Keith went on in his low, contained voice.  "Not their fault, poor
+fellows.  Very bad ground, Macgregor said; and they were wounded and
+under fire.  But the result is--a lesion----"
+
+"Lesion," Mark repeated frowning with the effort of thought.
+"Medical stuff.  In plain English ... I'm done for ... physically.
+That it?"
+
+Keith was silent a moment.  "That's ... about it: so far as they can
+tell at present.  But there's just a possibility of gradual
+improvement.  A very slow business.  And, at best, Dr. Norton fears
+recovery would only be partial----"
+
+"Thanks very much."
+
+The quiet courtesy of his tone pierced Keith to the heart.  He would
+infinitely sooner have heard Mark swear.  The swearing was bound to
+come, soon or late, and it would be a relief for both.
+
+At present, he merely closed his eyes and lay silent a long, long
+while, facing naked and unlovely facts with his vivid,
+forward-looking artist's brain....
+
+Some fool had once said: "_Never_ is a long word"; but no word ever
+coined was interminable enough to suggest the unnumbered army of days
+that threatened him--that was the literal effect--between seven and
+twenty and the merciful end of all.  Try as he would, he could not
+believe in it--yet.
+
+And the others--they had known it a week or more.  It must have been
+hell for them; and it explained everything.  Most startlingly, it
+explained--Bel.  If she had seemed, on occasion, to weary of an
+invalid lover, what manner of use would she have for a husband
+chained to a wheeled chair?  Had he any shadow of right to hold
+her--now?
+
+Unable to endure the torment of thought, he opened his eyes.  Keith
+still sat there, one elbow on the bed; his hand across his forehead
+shutting out the vision of Mark's face.
+
+"Keith, old man," he said, and Keith looked up with a start.  "Don't
+you worry.  I can--stick it.  Others, worse off--eh?  Half a
+life--half a loaf--"  He struggled to complete the connection; and
+failing, tried to smile.  "Mother?" he asked sharply and Keith drew
+in his lips.
+
+"No thought of herself.  Only you!"
+
+Then came the word he hardly dared speak.  "Bel?  She knows too?"
+
+"Yes.  She knows."
+
+Another long pause: but he forced himself to go on.
+
+"Keith--can I?  Ought I--?  Must I lose _every_ thing?"
+
+The words came out in a sudden rush.
+
+"That depends--" Keith answered with slow emphasis--"on her.
+Naturally--she is free, if she chooses.  But she has every right to
+refuse freedom; to wait ... on the chance....  Picture your mother in
+such a case."
+
+Mark pictured her; and knew very well that no lover of hers, so
+placed, would have need to fear the double loss.  But Bel--?  How
+imperfectly he knew her, how utterly unsure he was of her even now.
+
+"Why did they keep it from me?" he asked irrelevantly.
+
+"They were afraid for your head, till the three weeks were up."
+
+"Weeks?--what are weeks?" Mark murmured.  "Look here--they must leave
+me alone a bit.  Tell them.  An hour or two.  I'll ring."
+
+"Very well.  I will come again, this afternoon."
+
+Keith held out his hand and their mutual grasp supplied all racial
+disabilities.
+
+
+They left him alone the greater part of that morning; alone with the
+news that had come down on him like a guillotine snapping his life in
+two.  It struck him, in his first access of bitterness, that the
+guillotine would have been the more merciful fate----
+
+But the one practical problem of the moment was Bel.  It amazed and
+hurt him to realise how little he could foretell her line of action
+in this cruel dilemma.  Almost, he could see her rising,
+dramatically, superbly, to the heroic plane.  The difficulty was to
+see her keeping it up.  Throughout all her past "phases" he detected
+that same incapacity running like a fatal thread.  Though it pleased
+her to pose as a rebel, her instinctive skill lay, rather, in
+graceful evasion of circumstances that threatened to prove too strong
+for her.  Would she regard a crippled husband as a circumstance that
+called for graceful evasion?  That question she alone could answer.
+And how--and when was he to ask it?
+
+He could not yet write; and, like all strong natures, he inclined to
+the spoken word if anything unpleasant must be done; but he still
+felt quite unfit for the strain of a scene that might end
+disastrously.  He would of a certainty be tripped up by egregious
+verbal lapses, that, at such a moment, would be intolerable.
+
+If she came, however, he must see her and take his chance.
+
+She did not come; and the uncertainty, following on the shock of
+knowledge, was none too good for his nerves.  Dr. Norton advised a
+sleeping draught that afternoon and another at night.
+
+These gave him brief and merciful respite from the torment of
+thought: but morning brought fresh realisation, fresh perplexity.  It
+also brought a letter from Bel.
+
+He scarcely dared open it.  Did she know that he knew?  And was she
+too great a coward to face his pain?
+
+Her short note answered neither question.
+
+
+"Darling Man," she wrote, "this is to tell you that Harry and I must
+run down to Folkestone for three or four days on account of her work.
+A big meeting, for one thing; and she wants me to speak.  I'm rather
+keen about it.  Not so sure I haven't found my real vocation at last.
+I looked in yesterday evening to say good-bye: but Nurse said you
+were asleep and not on any account to be disturbed.  So the kisses
+must be stored up for a few days.  Forgive this hurried scrawl.  I'll
+write again from Folkestone.  Always your so loving Bel."
+
+
+He read that "hurried scrawl" several times over without arriving at
+any clear conclusion, except the obvious one that matters must stand
+over till her return; unless he could bring himself to write through
+his mother, an expedient that did not commend itself, except as a
+last resort.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+        "God's own gifts
+  Have a devil for the weak.
+  Yea the very force that lifts
+  Finds the vessel's secret leak."
+                                    MEREDITH.
+
+
+Bel's maiden speech at Folkestone proved an unqualified success.  Her
+sweet, well-modulated voice, hardly suitable for platform purposes,
+carried well enough in Mrs. Langton's double drawing-room where some
+sixty ardent feminists and pacifists, of both sexes, were gathered
+together mainly for the glorification of woman--as martyr in chief of
+man's recurrent lust for slaughter, and as the normal promoter of
+peace between nations, whose eyes were blinded with blood and wrath.
+
+Characteristically, she had concealed from Mark the real nature of
+the meeting and the subject-matter of her own speech.  This last, as
+may be supposed, emanated from Harry, though declaimed and decorated
+by Bel.  The Utopian vision of universal peace had caught hold of her
+imagination.  The fact that the world's harmony spelt comfort and
+material prosperity made a direct appeal to her practical brain: and
+now the shadow of her own private tragedy seemed more than ever to
+justify her leaning towards those who denounced as criminal the
+ruthless indefinite prolongation of war.
+
+"Woman and War";--the antithesis lent itself to a rhetorical opening,
+a study in contrasts: and Bel made the most of it.  War destroys
+life; woman creates and beautifies it.  War is brutality and
+coarseness _in excelsis_; woman is all tenderness and grace.  War
+stands for hate; woman for love.  War degrades; woman lifts and
+inspires.  The scope for contrast was infinite if not always exact.
+It would quite spoil the effect to admit that there were scores of
+women who had neither the will nor the power to lift and inspire:
+scores, like herself, for whom love was war, as fierce and unsparing
+as any conflict on earth.  Her concern was not with awkward
+realities, but with the success of her speech; and from these lofty
+opening flourishes, she swung downward to more practical
+considerations.  She reminded them that the patriotic spirit in which
+the women of England had worked and endured, through these first
+bewildering and terrible months of war, must assuredly win for them
+the all-round equality, economic and political, out of which they had
+been cheated for so long....
+
+There spoke the soul of Harry through the voice of Bel, vitiating
+fine service rendered by a perpetual eye on the ballot-box of the
+future.  But, for the moment, even the obsession of years paled
+before her consuming admiration of Bel in a new rôle.  Her address
+had been reserved as the finishing touch to a great occasion, the
+inauguration of a movement that promised far-reaching results.  For
+three quarters of an hour she held her audience--their eyes no less
+than their brains; and the culminating burst of applause was fully as
+much a tribute to the speaker as to the speech: of which fact Bel was
+radiantly aware.
+
+A select company of the audience remained for tea and talk.  Fads and
+theories flourished.  Compliments rained.  And Bel was never happier
+than in the limelight of uncritical praise.  Between Harry's open
+adoration and the joy of achievement, she was swept for the time
+being, right away from the perplexities and tragic issues of her
+lover's return.
+
+It needed only the unexpected appearance of Rex Maitland, and his
+discreet adulation, to complete her enjoyment.  But his polite
+enquiries about Mark elicited brief and evasive answers.  She had not
+yet found courage to tell any one the truth, only excepting Harry,
+whose honest sympathy for the man in no way affected her inevitable
+opinion as regards Bel.
+
+Maitland was among the still further selected few whom Mrs. Langton
+entertained at dinner: and Bel--in an apricot-yellow gown and her
+leopard-skin cloak was admittedly the heroine of the evening.  The
+whole affair was an experience after her own heart; marred only by
+that hovering shadow of tragedy that waited to engulf her when
+solitude and darkness left her at its mercy.
+
+Alone at last in her bedroom, it engulfed her very thoroughly,
+blotting out her tinsel triumphs, thrusting her in upon herself,
+demanding decisions.
+
+For nearly two weeks she had deliberately evaded the issue.  Now the
+time for evasion was over.
+
+Mark must already know his fate: and for the last few days she had
+been half hoping, half fearing that he would write, through his
+mother, offering to release her from their engagement.  Not a word
+had come; and to-morrow....
+
+Mechanically discarding her robe of triumpn, she slipped on a padded
+dressing-gown and sank into a comfortable chair by the fire to
+confront the situation.  No comfort there; look whichever way she
+would, it was all cruel and horrible: fresh proof that the Fates were
+in league against her, as always.  In her case, pity for the broken
+or imperfect creatures of earth was not akin to love, but to
+repulsion.  It was one of the chief horrors of this horrible war that
+it would fill the world with hundreds of maimed and disfigured men;
+perpetual reminders of an event which all sane people must surely
+crave to forget.
+
+And now--Mark would be one of them: Mark, her strong, splendid lover!
+
+To marry him would be to live with a perpetual reminder of the thing
+she abhorred: to spend her days either uncompanioned or tied to his
+chair.  No seasons in Town: no social triumphs.  She could not see
+Mark submitting to an invalid existence in London.  He would cling
+more obstinately than ever to Wynchcombe Friars.  So would the very
+position and affluence she craved be robbed of its chief attraction.
+She had enough imagination to foresee it all far too clearly; and the
+more she looked at the prospect the less she liked it.  The hope of
+gradual improvement held out by Dr. Norton, was too distant, too
+uncertain to mitigate the tragic actuality that lay like a stone upon
+her heart.  For the great man had told her plainly that if, in six
+months, there was no change of condition, the case would be hopeless.
+He considered improvement possible; but was too cautious to say more,
+or to, prophecy how far it might ultimately go.  And vague
+possibilities were not enough for Bel.  Suppose she did wait six
+months and then...?
+
+With a shiver of misery she leaned forward, covering her face; and
+tears, that came so rarely, fell from between her fingers.  Too well
+she knew that the compound of passion and sentiment which she called
+"love," would never stand the strain; and, genuinely though she
+sorrowed for Mark, she was many degrees more sorry for herself.  The
+root of her own tragedy lay in the fact that now--for the first time
+in her varied dealings with men--her heart was seriously involved;
+and its promptings did not agree with the promptings of her brain.
+
+Hitherto it had been an underling; obedient to the dictates of
+self-interest, more becomingly designated common-sense.  It had
+played no leading part in her swift, dramatic conquest of Mark; in
+the keen pleasure, known only to her kind, of luring him from a girl
+lovelier and worthier than herself, and with hardly a grain of
+coquetry in her composition.  Lady Forsyth's obvious disapproval had
+been but one stimulus the more: and, her head having guided her into
+a delectable harbour, she had felt, at last, sufficiently secure to
+let her heart have its way--with disastrous result.
+
+For, in her own fashion, she loved Mark now, more deeply and
+genuinely than she would have believed possible that day at Inveraig,
+when she had rejoiced mainly in the capture of a strong man, against
+his mother's wish and probably against his own cooler judgment.  Her
+triumph had been complete.  She had done more than capture him; she
+had held him; and now--no denying it--he very certainly held her.
+
+In his case, absence, and the letters that revealed unsuspected
+heights and depths in him, had served to strengthen that hold; while
+her own letters were having the opposite effect on him.  Nor had Mark
+been mistaken in thinking that she might rise, momentarily to the
+heroic plane.  For a few exalted days she had seen herself in the
+grand rôle; and had almost believed in her power to carry it through.
+But Nemesis pursued her: the Nemesis of her own nature.  Invariably
+her high impulses had been short-lived; rootless things, like seeds
+dropped on stony ground: and this one had proved no exception to the
+rule.
+
+Hovering to-night at the cross-roads, vowed to a decision before she
+slept, Bel discovered to her cost that this, the one great choice of
+her life, was decided already by the hundreds of minor, careless
+decisions that had gone before.  Since she had never yet, in small
+matters, chosen the path of hardness or unselfishness, so she could
+not choose it now.  The Greeks, as usual, were in the right of it:
+character is fate.
+
+For years, unconsciously, and with keen enjoyment, Bel Alison had
+been building up her own tragedy.  Now it turned and overwhelmed her.
+
+But she did not long indulge in the futility of tears.  Very soon her
+practical mind was at work again devising pleas that would throw a
+becoming light on her quite justifiable, if unheroic, refusal to face
+marriage with a husband who must either hamper her at every turn, or
+be a cipher in her life.  The main points in her eyes were to do the
+thing gracefully, to preserve at least a semblance of being in the
+right, and, if possible, to avoid witnessing the pain she could not
+choose but inflict.  For that reason, his silence troubled her.  It
+implied either that he meant to do the thing personally or--not to do
+it at all.  In which case, she would be driven to take the
+initiative.  That unpleasant possibility swung her back to her
+original lament.  It was all cruel and horrible: no escape any where
+from pain for herself or him.  She felt helpless, like a squirrel in
+a revolving cage.
+
+At least she must see him to-morrow and chance the result.
+
+
+"Better write and be done with it, Mavourneen," was Harry's counsel
+next day, when Bel suggested a train that would allow time to "look
+up Mark."  "It's a bitter business for the poor fellow losing
+everything at a stroke; and I can't believe he's the man to try and
+hold you in spite of all.  But if he gets making love to you--well!
+there's no knowing what might happen.  And there's only one end to
+the business that's fair on you.  Short and sharp's the kindest way
+of it, Bel.  It'll only be worse for the both of you if you let
+things drag on.  Cruel hard enough as it is."
+
+Bel admitted the hardship--and the risk: but she insisted on the
+earlier train; and wired to Mark her probable time of arrival at the
+Home.  Marriage or no marriage, she wanted simply to feel his arms
+round her, his lips on hers again.
+
+At first sight of him, her heart contracted so sharply that she had
+need of Harry's warning and vehement conviction to fortify her own
+resolve.  They had dressed him and moved him into an arm-chair by the
+fire.  A fur rug covered his legs.  The bandage had given place to a
+velvet football cap that hid the shaven patch on his head.
+Altogether, he looked more normal than she had seen him yet.  But the
+change that smote her was in his face; the look of his eyes as if
+some inner light had gone out.
+
+Those first few days of awful realisation as regards himself and
+bewildering uncertainty as regards Bel had told upon him visibly.
+The strong outline of his chin and jaw seemed sharper.  When he was
+not talking or smiling the strained expression of his lips was
+pitiful to see.  And his greeting, for the moment, unnerved her
+utterly.
+
+"Bel,--at last!" he cried, a queer ring in his voice, and held out
+his hand.
+
+She came to him swiftly and half flung herself on him kneeling beside
+his chair.  Very seldom in her life had she felt tongue-tied: but
+just then speech seemed the last impossibility.  And when she closed
+her eyes the feel of his rough Norfolk coat against her cheek carried
+her sharply back to days of cool, assured conquest at Inveraig.  If
+_only_ she had known!----
+
+Very sorely she began to wish that she had followed Harry's advice.
+For, though head governed heart, she was, like most egoists, a
+sentimentalist at the core.  Evenly balanced on the knife-edge
+between pain and pleasure, she leaned against her lover, expecting,
+yet half dreading the word that he, poor man, was doing his utmost to
+speak.
+
+So far he had said nothing to any one of the facts wrung from Keith a
+few days ago.  With his mother there had been no need.  Neither could
+have borne it: and their understanding was complete.  The mute
+sympathy of his Nurse no longer jarred: and his few recent visitors
+had continued to maintain a tactful silence.  Detailed talk on the
+subject would hurt like salt on an open wound.  It would also involve
+the inevitable scene, so distressful to his shaken nerves; and still,
+at critical moments, there lurked the dread of making ludicrous
+mistakes.
+
+But the main stumbling-block was Bel herself.  Her flight to
+Folkestone--he did not believe in the importance of that meeting--had
+convinced him that retreat was simply a prelude to graceful
+acceptance of her freedom.  Yet here she was, incalculable as ever,
+making passionate love to him: her lips mutely attesting, "I am
+yours, in spite of all!"
+
+Every minute of silence, every fresh kiss, made things harder for
+Mark.  The mere glamour of her most strangely out-lasted his own
+clearer vision.  After four of the worst days he had ever lived
+through, it was undeniably refreshing, if only because it made no
+demands on the higher centres of his brain and soul.  But it
+engendered neither true emotion nor response.  It was a pure anodyne;
+and as such he frankly recognised it.
+
+Conversely, Bel's emotion had so genuine a ring that it set him
+wondering had he after all, misjudged her?  Were there hidden deeps
+in her that this sharp test might reach and bring to light?  In that
+case it were hard to put her aside in the hour of his own greatest
+need for the best that woman can give; harder still to resist her in
+an appealing vein.
+
+He was mentally unstrung--and he knew it.  Not otherwise could her
+mere genius for love-making override his deep and real conviction
+that in freedom from her spell lay his sole chance of salvation.
+That very conviction made resistance seem unchivalrous; and he felt
+utterly unfit for the emotional strain of a dramatic scene, such as
+she would instinctively make out of a noble resolve to devote herself
+to a crippled husband.  By one of life's ironic twists their
+positions appeared to be reversed.
+
+It was not in him to conceive that she was merely indulging herself
+to the full because this must be the end; because, with the innate
+perversity of her kind she had never loved him better than now, when
+her will was set to give him up.
+
+Mark himself, with the deeper, ingrained perversity of human nature,
+felt a sudden distaste for this exuberance of sentiment, which
+thwarted his fixed intent and seemed tacitly to rebuke the secret
+defection of his heart.  He began to think the thing would have to be
+written after all.  In any case he needed time to readjust his mind
+in view of her possible refusal to be set free.
+
+To-morrow--perhaps.  Any idea of speaking to-day was "off." ...
+
+She released him at last, and sat back in his mother's low chair; her
+ringed hand resting close to his arm.
+
+"Well, fire away," he said in his natural manner.  "I want to
+know--all that--" a gesture filled the gap.  "Is the latest thing in
+... vocations going to be a thundering success?"
+
+She smiled at the recollection.
+
+"It started well anyway.  Compliments were flying."
+
+"What subject?"
+
+"Harry's pet subject, of course!  Chiefly glorification of ourselves.
+But we women _do_ get the kicks in war time and precious few of the
+ha'pence!"  Though she spoke lightly, a shade of bitterness crept
+into her tone.  "What harm if we make little tinsel crowns for
+ourselves just to keep up our spirits!"
+
+Then, sheering away as from the edge of a precipice she entertained
+him with thumb-nail sketches of Mrs. Langton and her friends and with
+a judicious selection of their flying compliments to herself.  The
+longer she stayed, the harder it became to get up and leave him--for
+the last time.  She felt convinced now, that he would not speak; and
+she did not mean to see him again.
+
+At last, somehow, she was on her feet, saying she must go; and when
+she stooped to kiss him, he looked searchingly into her eyes.
+
+"Badly bored--are you?--by your invalid lover?" he asked, probing her
+on impulse; but she managed to laugh it off.
+
+"Boring people is not one of his talents!" she said lightly, and
+leaned her head against him.
+
+"To-morrow?" he said in her ear.  And she, humanly
+inconsistent--could not bear that her last word to him should be a
+lie.  So, for answer, she kissed him lingeringly, and made haste to
+be gone.
+
+On the threshold she turned, for a last look.  But sudden tears
+blinded her; and, with a flutter of her hand she left him.
+
+
+Arrived at the flat, she found supper ready and Harry impatient, more
+from anxiety than anything else.  Even now she did not feel quite
+secure about Bel.  No one ever did.  It was perhaps half the secret
+of her power.
+
+"Well?" she asked abruptly.  Bel shook her head.
+
+"He never said a word."
+
+Crouching on the hearth-rug she drew off her gloves and held her
+chilled hands to the blaze.
+
+Harry's eyes scrutinised her fire-lit face.  "Perhaps he doesn't mean
+to."
+
+"Oh--I don't know.  But--I _can't_ go on----"
+
+"Of course you can't.  It's horribly unfair on you.  You must write
+yourself, Mavourneen.  Do it to-night; and get it over."
+
+Bel shivered.  "I suppose--I must.  But it seems so ungracious coming
+from me.  And ... it's not only him.  It's the whole thing----"
+
+Her voice broke suddenly and she sank on to the floor, sobbing
+passionately, her face hidden in the empty arm-chair.
+
+Quick as thought Harry was beside her, removing her hat, clinging to
+her, murmuring endearments; to all of which Bel submitted without
+response.
+
+"You're tired, my precious, and the strain of it all has upset your
+nerves.  It won't feel half so bad once you've got it over.  You
+shall have this room to yourself after supper and I'll post it the
+minute it's written.  Cheer up and eat something before it all gets
+cold.  Your poor old Harry will be ever so good to you----"
+
+Bel raised her head suddenly and shook off the clinging hands.  "Oh,
+let me alone!  You're not a bit sorry really.  You only want me for
+yourself.  But I'm bound to marry--I _must_ marry.  You know that.
+Yet you always try to prevent me.  If you hadn't made such an unholy
+fuss about Geoffrey, we might have been quite happy together now in
+Australia.  He was a good fellow anyway; and I would have been
+spared--_all this_.  Now I've tasted the best and I'll have to
+swallow the second best, with my eyes open and my heart locked up.
+It's evidently not safe, even to fall in love with one's affianced
+husband.  God knows I've had enough of tragedy----"
+
+With a superbly dramatic gesture she swept to her feet and left the
+discomfited Harry kneeling ignominiously by an empty chair.
+
+But if Harry's devotion was deep, her temper was short.  "And
+sometimes I think I've had enough of you, Bel," she flung out,
+scrambling ungainly from her knees.  "I, that have loved you and
+slaved for you--goodness knows why.  For all your sweetness, you're
+selfish, heartless, ungrateful----"
+
+She broke off, for Bel had vanished into her room and locked the door.
+
+In her own time, she reappeared--dignified, unapproachable and
+polite.  But before their half-cold meal was over, dignity had
+thawed; Harry's temper had evaporated and Bel had talked herself into
+the belief that her latest evasion was mainly prompted by
+consideration for Mark.  Since she could not rise to his level, it
+were kinder to leave him than to drag him down.  It was a singularly
+sustaining belief and it made her ungracious letter much easier to
+write.
+
+Harry, as good as her word, took a bundle of pamphlets to read by the
+kitchen fire, leaving her alone.
+
+After a little preliminary pacing and framing of sentences, Bel sat
+down to her task, steeled outwardly and composed.  Harry was right.
+Once the thing was done, past undoing, the worst wrench would be over.
+
+
+"My darling Mark," she began in her firm, clear hand.  "I can write
+that truthfully, in spite of what I am going to say.  It's not lack
+of love that forces me to do this hateful thing.  It's lack of
+something much bigger, which you possess and I most certainly don't.
+I knew, the minute I saw your face, that they had told you.  It's the
+cruelest, bitterest blow that could have fallen on a man like you.
+To say I'm sorry would be simply a travesty of what I feel about it.
+And you'll understand now what sort of a purgatory _I've_ been going
+through this last two weeks.  Let that be my excuse--if you admit any.
+
+"Mark--I didn't properly love you at Inveraig, but I do now.  And
+yet--I _can't_ marry you.  No use pretending.  I couldn't go through
+the pain and strain of it even for the finest man I've ever known.
+
+"I told you, when first this Inferno began, that you were too big for
+a mere Bel; that in spite of it I couldn't let you go.  Now,
+_because_ of it, I must.  This war has shrivelled up all I ever
+possessed in the way of a soul.  But it seems to have made you stand
+out bigger than before.  I believe that even this fiendish stroke of
+Fate will only crush you for a time.  You'll override it.  You and
+your astonishing mother.  Perhaps even wring some good out of it.
+That would simply drive me to the other extreme.  People ought _not_
+to accept and glorify horrors like this.  It's all wrong.  Simply
+encourages Kings and politicians to wallow in wholesale murder for
+their own ends.
+
+"But this is heresy to you; so no more.  If you hate reading this
+letter, please believe I've hated writing it.  I thought you might
+speak this afternoon.  But I expect it was too hard for you, poor
+boy.  And it's really kinder on my part to do it this way, even
+though it _seems_ to put me in an ungracious position.  If I saw you
+again, I might give way after all, in spite of myself.  But it
+_wouldn't last_.  A worse tragedy for you.  At least I'm sparing you
+that.  And I'm not returning your ring.  I feel sure you would like
+me to keep it with your letters, as a remembrance of the one real
+phase in my rather artificial life.
+
+"Will you miss me tremendously, I wonder?  But it's no use thinking
+of that now.  It's all cruel and horrible for both of us.
+
+"If you ever hear of me marrying, you'll know it is simply a business
+arrangement--and no doubt you'll be very sorry for the man.  Enough
+of this.  Good-bye.  Your unworthy but not unloving Bel."
+
+
+There--it was done, even to the straight thick line under her
+signature with a loop at one end.  She forced herself to read it
+through, with a critical detachment, and decided that it could not
+well be improved upon.  Even the ungraceful thing, she had managed to
+do gracefully.  There was a gleam of comfort in that.  She felt half
+tempted to show it to Harry; but refrained.  Harry was allowed to run
+out with it, however, though her cough was troublesome and a fine
+cold rain was falling.
+
+Alone again, Bel sat down by the fire and tried not to be aware of a
+chill emptiness at her heart....
+
+It was a sharp pang, this parting: the sharpest she had yet known.
+But she could and would live it down.  Her invincible common-sense
+assured her that, after all, there were other men in the world,
+moneyed and titled; that a woman between thirty and thirty-five was
+at the zenith of her charm.  But something else told her that men of
+Mark's quality do not grow on bramble bushes.  Though he could not
+lift her to his level, he had raised her standard, if only for a
+time.  The sort of husband who might have done very well six months
+ago would, now, not do at all.  More and more she saw herself as the
+chief sufferer in this double calamity.  Mark had his own fineness to
+uphold him.  He had a beautiful home, devoted friends, a mother who
+worshipped him, Mr. Macnair, Sheila----
+
+Though Bel put Sheila last, the thought of her had come first: and in
+the private corner of her heart she was glad that her loss could not
+be Sheila's gain.  Though Mark might hesitate to set her free, she
+could not see him proposing marriage to another woman.  It was her
+one crumb of consolation.
+
+At the sound of the latch-key in the lock she rose and went hurriedly
+to her own room.  Harry's jealous devotion seemed to her suddenly a
+thing intolerable----
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+  "There never was to God such worship sent
+  By any angel in the heavenly ways
+  As this, that Life has uttered for God's praise:--
+  This girlhood--as the service of Life said
+  In the beauty and the manners of this maid."
+                                      L. ABERCROMBIE.
+
+
+But Mark Forsyth had still a long black road to travel before he
+could arrive at mastering calamity, or even at recognising the very
+real ameliorations which Bel had enumerated for her own justification.
+
+During those first staggering days, realisation bit into him like a
+corrosive acid, that he had lost, at a stroke, all the manlier side
+of life; all free, independent movement, and the right to hold his
+promised wife, even if she willed.  More and more he doubted this
+last, in spite of recent proof that her love had been growing deeper
+precisely as his own had begun to wane.  That was during her absence
+at Folkestone, which, in the circumstances, looked like a prelude to
+rejection.
+
+And all the while, locked in the depths of his being, lay the hidden
+knowledge that he had jettisoned the real woman for the sake of the
+tinsel sham and had discovered the truth too late.  He knew now why
+his feeling for Sheila had been so curiously unaffected by his
+passing passion for Bel.  It belonged to the depths; and there it had
+lain hidden, like a jewel in a mine.  Once he was blind.  Now he saw.
+War and its vicissitudes had effectually burnt away the husks and
+left the real man--battered, enlightened, enlarged....
+
+His sole ray of light, since the blow fell, had been one of Sheila's
+rare letters, written directly she heard that he knew the truth.
+Short and simple as it was, Mark found in every line of it the
+inexpressible fragrance of her spirit, the sure delicate touch of the
+healer on his hidden wound.  It had given him a passing uplift, a
+glimpse of what life might be when the fog had cleared.  At present,
+it seemed to be choking the life out of him, converting all his
+strength to weakness, his blood to gall.
+
+Sheila wrote that she was still very much tied with work at Westover.
+Mr. Nacnair had been angelic about coming down and giving her
+first-hand news; but the moment it was possible, she would fly up to
+London for a glimpse of them both.
+
+And on the morning after Bel's return--just as Mark was beginning to
+wonder at her non-appearance--the door opened to admit Lady Forsyth
+and Sheila, in squirrel furs, with a bunch of violets in her coat.
+
+"Sheila!" he exclaimed, startled, yet frankly overjoyed.  "Lord--it's
+like--seeing you suddenly--like a breath of Hampshire in this
+confounded London.  I'd pretty well given you up."
+
+"I've been trying to come for nearly a week.--True."  She nodded,
+beaming on him and unfastening her violets while she talked.  "It
+seemed hopeless.  Then suddenly, to-day, I saw a free space ahead.
+There was no time to cry, 'Look out!'  So I just flew off and nipped
+into a kind train.  And these"--she held out her violets--"are for
+you.  I wanted to bring a sheaf of Father's special chrysanthemums.
+But I'd have lost the train."
+
+"I prefer these," he said, and under pretence of sniffing them he
+touched them with his lips.  "Fasten them--will you?  I'm no better
+than an overgrown infant."
+
+She shook her head at the faint note of bitterness.  "A very capable
+infant!  And your precious right hand's ever so much better.  There!
+They look lovely."
+
+For answer, he merely glanced from the flowers to her face.  Lady
+Forsyth, standing near the window?  watched the little scene with a
+yearning ache at her heart.  Now she came forward and patted Mark's
+shoulder.
+
+"You shall have her to yourself," she said, "for a real long talk.
+I'll do dragon downstairs and keep Londoners at bay!"
+
+"That's good."
+
+Mark's tone was gravely content.  Reaching out, he drew a low chair
+nearer to the fire and to himself.  "Sit--Mouse," he said, as his
+mother moved away.  "Take off your coat.  Look as if--you'd come to
+stay."
+
+She obeyed, more gladly than he knew, and, sitting down by him, drew
+a khaki sock out of her bag.  "You must excuse," she said smiling.
+"We're as bad as the French Revolution, these days!  I'm more or less
+responsible for Ralph's men.  They feel the cold cruelly, poor dears!
+And I don't get overmuch time now.  Mums looks rather strained and
+tired, doesn't she?"
+
+Mark nodded.  "It's been cruel hard on her--this business.  But she's
+come through it all ... 'm what's the confounded word?--a heroine.
+Has she said much to you?"
+
+"Not much.  She knows I understand.  We came very close together ...
+before."
+
+Mark leaned forward.
+
+"You know, you promised you'd tell me ... all that.  And then--you
+never came!"
+
+"Dear, I couldn't," she said very low to the heel of her sock.
+
+He watched her a while in silence; approving the clear, delicate
+outline of her profile, the soft-toned blue of her blouse, and the
+old lace collar he had given her two years ago.  He knew now how
+impermissibly he had been craving to see her....
+
+"Well, as you _have_ turned up, at last,"  he said, abruptly breaking
+the silence, "tell ... all about it now.  I'm dead sick of myself."
+
+And she told...
+
+For nearly an hour they were left in peace.  Not since that long-ago
+talk on the terrace, when she had surprised him by denouncing Bel,
+had they talked so intimately or at such length; and for Mark it was
+the most satisfying hour he had known since his return.  Both of
+them, unsuspected by each other, clung rather desperately to "Mums"
+as the one topic on which they could safely draw near together.  Then
+Sheila wanted to hear about Sœur Colette.  This was not easy
+matter for Mark, but he achieved it, after a fashion.  He was
+describing his own abortive attempt to thank the devoted little nun
+at parting, when there came a knock at the door.
+
+It was the maid with two letters for Mark.  With a start--half
+relief, half vexation--he recognised Bel's writing.
+
+"May I?" he asked.
+
+And Sheila, rising casually, went over to the window that looked
+across the Park.  This quiet hour together had been so rare and
+perfect a gift from the blue that she could hardly endure to watch
+him read a love-letter from Bel.  That the girl could dream of
+leaving him in his helplessness never so much as entered her head.
+
+A smothered curse startled her and she turned sharply.
+
+"Mark!" she cried, an irrepressible ring of tenderness in her tone;
+but he scarcely heard her.
+
+The Mark of five minutes earlier--her Mark--had vanished.  The man
+she confronted was of Bel's making.  He had tossed his letter on to
+his elbow-table.  He sat looking straight before him, his face set
+and stern.
+
+"Oh--_what_ is it?" she asked, rooted to the spot by a feeling that
+she ought not to be there.  No one ought to see him suffering so.
+But Mark, dashed from his haven of content by a great wave of anger
+and disgust, was past troubling about any human presence.
+
+"She ... has no further use for me.--That's all," he said, as if he
+were speaking into vacancy.  "And yesterday I was fool eno' ... Quite
+a ... masterly composition!"
+
+Could Bel have heard that last she would have felt punished indeed.
+But it was Sheila who heard it--Sheila who stood grasping the
+window-sill, swept by a tempest of anger scarcely less than his own.
+
+"Oh--she's a coward--a coward!"  The words flashed out involuntarily;
+and he seemed suddenly to be aware of her.
+
+"You tender-hearted Mouse," he said, in a changed voice.  "You ...
+don't understand, eh?  But ... it's natural enough.  Inevitable.  No
+one ... but Mums could be expected ... to have any use for me--now."
+
+To that tragic remark Sheila could find no answer.  Besides, she was
+fighting back her tears and wondering desperately, ought she perhaps,
+to speak of what she knew?  Would it give him the smallest
+consolation?  Was it fair to kick even Bel when she was down--Bel,
+who had taken her all?  Fair, or not, the thing was not in Sheila's
+nature.  She was human enough to wish that Mark could know--now.  But
+she was not the one to tell him.
+
+"Thank God--for Mums," she said softly, after a long pause; and he
+bowed his head in heartfelt acquiescence.
+
+The strained hardness had gone from his face.  But the irony of the
+whole situation was piercing his heart.  Sheila--who would have been
+staunch through thick and thin--here alone with him, almost within
+arm's length, yet irrevocably, eternally out of reach; lost to him
+through his own blind folly.  If ever mortal man endured the torment
+of Tantalus it was Mark Forsyth in that hour of bewildered anger and
+pain.
+
+Sheila, believing him heart-broken, remained near the window, seeking
+some inadequate word of comfort, and finding none.  Instinct told her
+that, for the moment, silence was best.  Probably he was not even
+aware of her: while she, startled out of her stoic self-repression,
+had never been so intimately, so poignantly aware of him.
+
+Unconsciously he had clenched his left hand until the knuckles stood
+out sharp and white.  He sat staring into the fire with a fixed
+unseeing look.  At intervals his eyebrows twitched nervously; and
+sudden fear seized her lest this blow had fallen on him before he was
+fit for the strain.
+
+"Mark," she said at last, very gently, and came closer to him now.
+"It simply ... bewilders me; and it has come at such a cruel moment.
+But you mustn't let--things upset you too much.  Would you rather be
+alone?"
+
+To her surprise he flung out his hand and grasped her wrist.
+
+"No--no.  Don't _you_ leave me!"
+
+Was it fancy,--or was there an under-note of fear in his tone?  The
+mere possibility pierced her heart.
+
+"Sit down--please," he said abruptly, and released her.  "You've come
+all this way and I've been simply----"
+
+He checked himself, and was thankful that she would suppose he had
+forgotten a word.  "I've been--looking forward to it for so long.
+I'll be rotten company.  But do stay...."
+
+He let out a great sigh and she sat by him as before; but the spell
+of their happy intercourse was broken.  Bel had come upon the scene,
+and, as usual, had spoilt everything.
+
+"I think," she said, "you ought to lie back and rest a little.  Would
+you prefer ... shall I read?"
+
+"Do.  I'd love it."
+
+"What have you got here? ... Roman Rolland?"
+
+"Yes: a new one--the '_Michel Ange_.'  It's splendid."
+
+He indicated the page; but first she must arrange his chair and
+cushions at a restful slope.  Leaning back he gazed up at her.  For a
+mere instant his eyes lingered in hers, that had the clear depth and
+quiet of a mountain lake.
+
+"Clever Mouse!" he said, in a voice of lazy content.  "And look here,
+not a word to Mums.  She'd rage.  We'll have our afternoon in peace;
+and I'll tell her to-night.  Go ahead."
+
+Pocketing Bel's letter, he closed his eyes; and Sheila, between the
+sentences, could scrutinise his face.  Cheek-bones and jaw and the
+fine strong curve of the eye-bone still stood out too sharply; and
+she noted with a pang the strained corners of his mouth.  Beneath his
+surface composure she detected unmistakable signs of jarred
+nerves--signs she was learning to know too well--and a great longing
+came over her to soothe him with the touch of her skilled fingers
+over his forehead and head.  But the very intensity of her feeling
+made her shrink from an offer that would otherwise have been a mere
+matter of course.
+
+Meantime she must give her attention to Michael Angelo----
+
+And it was so that Lady Forsyth found them when she came to carry
+Sheila off for lunch.
+
+After his prescribed rest, they returned and had their afternoon in
+peace.  Though Mark's natural cheerfulness was still shadowed by his
+calamity, Sheila--seeing what she had seen--marvelled at the
+controlled ease of his manner.  And few could estimate better the
+manifold difficulties of self-control.
+
+The moment of parting put an almost equal strain on both.
+
+"Come again soon, Mouse," he said, with a brave show of lightness
+that wrung her heart.  "It's done me good--a breath of country air."
+
+She promised to come, when stress of work allowed, and she frankly
+returned the pressure of his hand.
+
+Then--she was gone: and for Mark it was as if the sun had fallen out
+of the sky.  Alone--with the haunting sense of her presence, the
+empty chair, and that letter in his pocket, a chill conviction crept
+through him that life--real life--was over and done with--that he had
+reached the dead end of everything.
+
+
+His mother, when she reappeared, found him lying listless and
+unoccupied, staring into space.  As she came to the fire and drew off
+her gloves, he glanced up at her without a word of greeting: a glance
+that would normally have hurt her.  But, in those days, thought and
+feeling were altogether concentrated on him.
+
+"Darling," she said, in a voice that tried not to sound over-anxious,
+"you look horribly done up.  It was lovely, wasn't it?  But I'm
+afraid it's all been a little too much for you."
+
+His answer, spoken in a vehement undertone, jarred all through her.
+
+"You're right.  The whole cursed situation is just a little too much
+for me."  Then, seeing the startled pain in her eyes, he handed her
+Bel's envelope, adding more gently: "I'm not going off my head.  That
+came this morning."
+
+She read it slowly, with very mixed feelings, and Mark's eyes never
+left her face.  The breeze of her thoughts rippled over it like wind
+over a pool.  But she did not "rage" as he had anticipated.  She was
+at once too thankful and too profoundly angered by the girl's
+invincible coolness and selfishness to find relief in mere explosives.
+
+"Well?" he asked, seeing that she had reached the end.
+
+"_Well!_" she echoed, with eloquent brevity.  Then, after a pause:
+"No wonder that took the virtue out of Sheila's visit.  It's Bel
+through and through.  I can make no severer comment.  And, after all,
+one detects a touch of poetic justice.  She did it ... before to hurt
+you deliberately for her own ends.  Now she's compelled to do it,
+being what she is.  Of course----"
+
+"Mother, be _quiet_!"  Mark's eyebrows twitched and he raised a
+commanding hand.  "She's in the right of it.  But yesterday ... she
+never gave me a chance....  Not likely I should dream of holding her
+to...  Oh Lord!"  He clenched his hand and closed his eyes, as if to
+shut out the intolerable truth.  But the enemy was within.
+
+And his mother stood there watching him.  Every nerve in her quivered
+with his pain as well as her own; and two great tears rolled unheeded
+down her cheeks.
+
+Suddenly Mark opened his eyes; and at sight of her mute controlled
+misery, his heart smote him.
+
+"_Mother_ ... I'm a graceless beast," he said slowly.  "Thank
+God--there's _you_----"
+
+"Yes--there's me--always!"  With a sharp sob she fell on her knees
+beside him and pressed her lips upon his hand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+"Suffer not woman in her tenderness to sit near him in the darkness.
+Banish the frailties of hope, wither the relenting of love, scorch
+the fountain of tears...."--DE QUINCEY.
+
+
+Next morning they could speak of it all more calmly.  Mark had slept
+little and had done some unpleasantly lucid thinking in the small
+hours.
+
+"Now--it must be business to-day," he said, when his mother appeared
+after breakfast, to read or to write for him according to his mood.
+"And first, we must answer _this_."
+
+He brought his hand down sharply on Bel's letter.
+
+"Need you?" she asked.
+
+"Yes--I need.  I've ... one or two things to say.  My left-hand
+scrawl's not legible yet; so--you must write them for me.  She won't
+like that."
+
+It was the first time Helen Forsyth had heard a vindictive note in
+her son's voice.
+
+"No," she said quietly; and, opening his despatch-case, she laid out
+her materials, while he sat worrying his moustache.
+
+When she was ready, he dictated in a low, impersonal tone the "one or
+two things" that he had thought out in the small hours.
+
+"Bel, I have your letter.  Of course you are free.  I had no other
+intention.  I meant to tell you on Thursday, but ... I was a weak
+fool----"
+
+"Mark!" his mother remonstrated; and he frowned sharply.
+
+"I was a weak fool," he repeated with emphasis.  "Written it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"As it's hard on you losing everything, I am instructing my
+solicitors to pay you the £5000 I told you about.  Money is always
+useful."
+
+At that, his mother laid down her pen.
+
+"My dear boy, it's out of the question.  Walker will think you've
+gone mad."
+
+"Walker may think what he pleases.  He will get his instructions
+before he knows the engagement is off."
+
+The set of Mark's face warned her that she was knocking her head
+against a wall; but she could not give in without further protest.
+
+"Darling, do be reasonable," she pleaded.  "It's not fair----"
+
+"Not fair--on whom?" he blazed round at her.  "I'm not despoiling
+Wynchcombe Friars.  And it isn't as if ... there was any
+chance--Marriage is out of the question.  And ... it's a bit hard on
+Bel.  After all, she's lost her husband through the war.  I'm simply
+treating her as if she was my widow.  And it may save some other
+luckless chap from ... the 'business arrangement' she proposes to
+ratify at the altar.  Anyway, Mother, the money's mine, and I don't
+feel fit to argue the point.  If you won't write what I want, I must
+do it through Keith--that's all."
+
+She bit her lip to keep back the futile retort.  He was plainly not
+himself this morning.  Dr. Norton had warned her of possible nerve
+complications.  Opposition was useless; probably harmful.  And what
+did a little money matter after all?
+
+"Of course I'll write what you want, Mark," she said quietly. "But
+... wouldn't three thousand be enough?"
+
+"Oh, all right, three thousand," he agreed listlessly, to her
+complete surprise.  All the fire seemed to have gone out of him.
+"Let's get it over.  Have you written everything?  Thanks.  Give it
+here."
+
+He read it through, while his mother watched him with troubled eyes,
+then slowly, laboriously he scrawled with his left hand: "Good-bye.
+Mark Stuart Forsyth."
+
+"There--that's done," he said, pushing the paper across the table.
+"Write instructions to Walker in my name, will you?  I feel fagged
+out.  This cursed lying up saps all one's energy."
+
+Though her heart yearned over him, she answered nothing.  He needed
+no cheap word of sympathy from her.  They were one in suffering; and
+he knew it.  All she could do for him was to be untiring in his
+service.
+
+While she went on with her writing, he lay silent and inert, not even
+troubling to fill his pipe--an achievement that had delighted him a
+few days ago.
+
+Mechanically Helen's pen travelled over the paper; but she scarcely
+knew what she wrote, so harassed was her brain with perplexity and
+foreboding.  She had hoped much from Sheila's visit, but Bel had
+stepped in and spoilt the effect.  Just when the first realisation of
+his fate was blackening everything, she must needs rub salt into his
+wound by dwelling on the pain and strain which she could not endure.
+And Mark responded by heaping coals of fire on her head.  It was
+maddening of him; but at the moment every minor consideration was
+dwarfed by the discouraging state of his nerves.  His alterations
+between listlessness and irritability alarmed her.  Mercifully, Dr.
+Norton was coming to-morrow; and she hoped Keith would arrive soon.
+
+At the first, far-off sound of his footstep she laid down her pen.
+"I'll be back in a minute, darling," she said, and hurried away.
+
+In the midst of all her anxiety and sorrow, it was a very real
+blessing to have Keith back again; and, as regards Mark, her reliance
+on him was absolute.  To her, their relation seemed a singularly
+perfect thing.  She had almost forgotten--in her concentration on
+Mark--that he was supposed to be in love with her.
+
+"What's wrong now?" he asked: she was so obviously thankful to see
+him.
+
+"Oh, everything.  Come in here a minute."
+
+She led him into the empty ante-room where visitors waited; and there
+told him, in a few trenchant phrases, the tale of Bel's defection, of
+Sheila's visit, and of Mark's change for the worse.
+
+"I suspect he didn't sleep much last night, and I'm afraid I ...
+rather ... get on his nerves," she concluded, with a pitiful quiver
+of her lip.  "Something fresh is hurting him terribly--something
+bigger, I think, than the loss of Bel.  Keith ... I'm afraid ... for
+his precious brain."
+
+"Don't get thinking that, Helen."  Keith's eyes were gentler than his
+tone.  "How about another drive?  The first was a success.  We'll ask
+Nurse."
+
+"Yes, do."  Her face cleared.  "But I think--unless he asks for me--I
+won't come.  He can feel my anxiety--just as I feel his pain.  And it
+worries him."
+
+"Well--perhaps you're right.  You mothers are the standing miracles
+of creation."
+
+She shook her head; but his quietly spoken tribute cheered and
+comforted her, as he had meant that it should.
+
+"Nurse" approved the suggestion of a drive, and Mark assented without
+enthusiasm.  He also accepted without comment the fact that his
+mother was not coming; and she, from the window, watched them go in a
+mood of bewildered misery that came very near despair.  Could she
+have broken down the wall of Mark's reserve and probed the depths of
+his hidden pain, even her fine courage might altogether have given
+way.  But mercifully man "goes upon his long business like a blind
+child...."
+
+
+To-day's drive was quite conspicuously not a success.  The first one
+had come at a happy moment.  But Mark was slipping steadily down into
+the dark places of the soul where happy moments are not, where he
+would have to fight with beasts--quite as real and terrible as the
+beasts at Ephesus--before he could win again to daylight and sanity
+and acceptance.
+
+To-day, though the sun shone fitfully and the sky showed frail
+patches of blue, his soul was unresponsive, utterly, to the still
+small voice of hope.  To-day the mere sight of whole men and women,
+walking, riding free to come and go, to feel the good earth under
+their feet, stirred him suddenly to such a fury of rebellion that he
+felt as if his brain would burst.
+
+Bombs!  That was what he wanted.  Bombs to hurl right and left into
+that complacent crowd, that talked "war" and "atrocities" and "the
+Christmas truce," and knew nothing about it all--nothing whatever.
+Why were there no bombs?  It was scandalous mismanagement----
+
+By some queer freak, the taxi had become a trench and the complacent
+Londoners were Germans--swarms of them.  One couldn't imagine Germans
+otherwise than in swarms.  And there was only one way to prevent
+these swarms from overrunning the earth:--shells and guns, unlimited
+shells and guns.  When the deuce would Home Authorities even begin to
+wake up...?
+
+At this point the Germans vanished; the trench was a taxi again, and
+Mark glanced furtively at Keith as if to see whether he had noticed
+the transformation.  But Keith had merely seen the outer Mark sunk in
+an unnatural apathy that seemed to confirm his own worst forebodings;
+and now, in response to that questioning glance, he smiled his
+tranquil, rather tired smile.
+
+"A nice change getting out into the open, eh, old man?" he said.  "In
+a few months' time you may be handling your own car."
+
+"Think so?"  A flicker of interest sounded in Mark's tone.
+
+"Quite possible, I should say.  When that day comes we'll go round
+recruiting again--you and I."
+
+Then, having caught Mark's attention, he dilated a little upon that
+vexed question, and ventured a pious hope that some day,
+something--perhaps Zeppelin bombs in Downing Street--would convince a
+Government, presumably anxious for victory, that, in war, time spelt
+not merely money but infinitely precious human lives.
+
+Mark gave the matter his polite consideration, though it seemed to
+him curiously remote.  Keith was doing his best.  They all were; but
+none of them had a glimmering idea of the Sheila complication, or of
+what the whole thing meant--for him.  Just as well, perhaps.
+
+He felt half ashamed, now, of the sudden rage that had possessed him;
+and that brief vivid delusion had startled him not a little.  He must
+"hang on to things" firmly or it might recur.
+
+He hung on, accordingly, till the drive ended and they carried him up
+to his room, haunted now by Sheila's presence.  His mother was out;
+and Keith, as luck would have it, began to talk of Sheila and to sing
+her praises, till Mark could endure it no more.  His brows twitched
+and he hung on to things with desperate tenacity.  But it was
+useless.  Keith, in the kindness of his heart, was jabbing nails into
+him: driving them home----
+
+For a time Mark bore it in semi-silence: then, to Keith's
+consternation, he suddenly and very completely let himself go....
+
+For close on half an hour he cursed everything and everyone, more
+especially the devoted Macgregor, whose superfluous zeal had saved
+him from extinction.  He raged against his dependence on others,
+against the broken life ahead of him, with a terrible fluency and
+command of language that Keith had not heard from him since full
+power of speech returned.
+
+To interrupt or reason with him were worse than useless: moreover,
+Macnair knew that, for a man of Mark's passionate nature, some such
+explosion was inevitable, and he devoutly hoped it might bring
+relief.  Much of it, both in manner and matter, was so foreign to the
+true Mark, that Keith found it all unendurably painful.  Yet he
+endured; and at intervals said what he could, which was little
+enough; first, because he was a tongue-tied Scot; second, because
+Mark was in no condition just then for comfort of any kind.
+
+Slowly the storm died down to disconnected mutterings of apology and
+self-disgust; and the sound of his mother's footstep without silenced
+him altogether.
+
+"Oh Lord!  Here's Mums," he murmured, and Keith did not fail to
+notice the worried look in his eyes.  "Don't go, old man.  And for
+God's sake--don't give me away."
+
+"_Is_ it likely?" Keith asked, with a reproachful look.  "She has
+more than enough to bear."
+
+Words and tone had their intended effect.  When his mother appeared,
+Mark achieved a smile.
+
+She came to him and kissed his forehead.
+
+"Had a nice drive?"
+
+"Oh, a damned delectable drive!" he answered with a short laugh.
+"Beastly unfair on Keith, dosing him with an hour of my society."
+
+"You shut up," Keith commanded sternly; and Helen, seeing that
+something had gone wrong, made haste to change the subject.
+
+Keith took her out to lunch and had a good deal to say about the
+political situation.  Then, the day being Saturday, he insisted on a
+Symphony Concert.  He further insisted on ringing up Sir John
+Forsyth--who happened to be in town--and asking him to look in on
+Mark for tea.  Helen never liked him better than in these occasional
+autocratic moods.  Too often nowadays the one thing she prayed to be
+delivered from was a decision, no matter how trifling; and at such
+times the masculine note of command was restful beyond belief.
+
+So she went with him to the Queen's Hall; and Beethoven's music
+flowed like a river of healing over the bruised places of her heart;
+and when they returned to Park Lane, Sir John began insisting also.
+
+This, though she never guessed it, was equally Keith's doing.
+
+Laura, he said, had given him strict injunctions to bring Helen back
+for dinner.  "Quite quiet," the Admiral assured her, seeing
+hesitation on her face.  "Only ourselves and the Desmonds.  He's up
+on some recruiting business.  Age cannot wither him.  Wonderful
+fellow!"
+
+"But--Mark," Helen murmured, glancing at her son, who seemed lost in
+his own reflections.
+
+"I'll spend the evening with him," Keith struck in.  "Nothing I
+should enjoy better."
+
+Mark, who was listening fitfully, greeted that statement with a
+grimace and a faint, very faint, twinkle in his eye.  The eclipse of
+his humour was, to those who loved him, a bitter thing; and, in
+Keith's opinion, a bad sign.
+
+It was certainly not in evidence that evening.  The afternoon's
+explosion seemed to have flung him to the other extreme.  He smoked
+pipe after pipe without volunteering a word; and Keith, watching him
+unobserved, grew more anxious than ever.  Towards the end, after a
+long silence, he suddenly leaned forward and gave Keith a straight
+look.
+
+"I've got it!" he said, with decision.
+
+"Got what, old chap?" Keith asked, feeling seriously alarmed.
+
+"A priceless sentence of Robert Louis'--rather apt for the occasion,"
+Mark answered; and Keith broke into a low laugh of relief.  "It's
+been wandering in my head, bits of it.  Couldn't piece them together.
+Now it's come straight.  'When we have fallen through storey after
+storey of our vanity and aspiration, and sit rueful among the ruins,
+it is then that we begin to measure the stature of our friends.'
+Struck me I'd been ... measuring yours to-day.  Understand?"
+
+"I do understand."  Keith was too deeply moved to say more.
+
+"Not quite so crazy, am I, as I sounded this afternoon," Mark went
+on, with a pathetic pride in his own achievement.
+
+"Not a bit of it!  If you can quote R.L.S. verbatim, you'll do all
+right, in time."
+
+"Yes--in time."  Mark let out his breath and leaned back against his
+cushions.  "Meanwhile I--'sit rueful among the ruins.'  And you must
+make allowances, you ... people."
+
+At that, Keith rose abruptly; it was time to be gone.
+
+"My dear fellow," he said, and laid a hand on Mark's shoulder, "we're
+ready to make all the allowances on earth.  Only--" a pause--"as far
+as you can ... be merciful to your mother."
+
+Mark sighed.  "Mums?  Yes--that's the difficulty.  Women are the
+deuce."
+
+"A few of them," Keith remarked with quiet emphasis, "are about all
+the visible guarantee we have that--there's a God in heaven!"
+
+Then he took his leave, feeling a shade less anxious, but determined
+to be on the spot next morning and to see Dr. Norton when he came.
+
+
+"Sleep sound, old chap," was his parting injunction; but the brief
+snatches of sleep that came to Mark in the early hours of the night
+were robbed of all healing influence by dreams--hideous dreams, such
+as he had not suffered from since his earlier days in the Red Cross
+barn.  Vividly he saw again that mound of earth, in the moonlight,
+and the leg that would not be still; and again, in imagination, he
+crept out into the open, caring nothing for risks if only he could
+quiet that leg or release its owner.
+
+Up to this point, the dream was always the same.  It varied only in
+its culmination.  And to-night there sprang from behind the mound a
+colossal German with nails like talons and eyes like live coals.  But
+when Mark would have sprung at him he found himself paralysed; while
+the Thing under the mound whimpered for help, and the Creature--a
+very Apollyon--loomed nearer every moment....
+
+Miraculously, he shook off that nightmare rigidity.  He was locked in
+a suffocating death-grapple.  The Creature's breath scorched his
+face; and, with a start, he awoke, shivering, beads of cold sweat
+upon his forehead.
+
+"My God!" he breathed, between horror and relief, and promptly
+switched on the light.  It was just after one o'clock; but sleep and
+the desire of sleep were gone from him.
+
+To quiet his mind and cleanse it of fear he tried reading a few pages
+of _Michel Ange_.  It was useless.  His eyes followed the words but,
+although he understood them, they made no connected impression on his
+brain.
+
+With a sigh he gave it up, switched off the light and lay there,
+open-eyed, hour after hour, watching two panels of moonlight shift
+slowly across the carpet, climb the wall, lessen and vanish as the
+moon swung westward.  Outside, the companionable hum of traffic grew
+fainter; ceased altogether; and left him at the mercy of his
+increasingly bitter thoughts.
+
+Too clearly he foresaw the peculiar trials of his hampered,
+restricted life; devoid of freedom, devoid of movement, save such as
+he could accomplish in a wheeled chair, or a motor--perhaps.  To a
+man of independent spirit and immense physical vigour, the prospect
+was intolerable; and the glimmer of hope on the horizon was too dim
+to pierce the fog that shrouded his spirit.  Better a shattered limb,
+that could have been replaced, than this hulk of useless bone and
+sinew.  Even now he could not grasp the fact that in all probability,
+he would never stand squarely on his feet again----
+
+And that was only a part of the tragedy: the rest was entirely of his
+own making, which did not mend matters--rather the reverse.
+
+In the silence, one reiterate sentence kept hammering at his brain:
+"All along, I have been a fool--worse than a fool.  All along, Mums
+has been right."
+
+Forcing himself to travel backward through the years, he saw, now,
+how obviously it had been Sheila from the very beginning; so
+obviously, that he had taken things almost too much for granted.  She
+and Mums were his life.  He had asked nothing better; and having them
+constantly with him, he had scarcely given a thought to marriage.  On
+the whole, he had preferred his freedom.  Marriage could wait.
+
+It was her sudden departure from his horizon and her charming
+letters--she was fairly communicative on paper--that had set him
+thinking seriously of her, dreaming of her, longing to see her again.
+That year of her absence had seemed a rather blank year.
+
+Then--she had come back....
+
+He remembered very well that moment of meeting; the stir in his
+veins; the new touch of shyness between them, and the light in his
+mother's eyes.  He understood it all now.  She had been watching her
+dearest dream come true.
+
+Soon after that he had found himself wondering--did Sheila, by any
+chance, care?  Or was it chiefly Mums?  And was he no more to her
+than Ralph?
+
+At that point--with a suddenness, a swiftness of which he now felt
+half ashamed--Bel happened to him.  There is no other word for it.
+She came, smiled, conquered; and for a time he was translated; no
+longer master of his destiny and very hardly master of himself.
+
+Living again through those plays, he began to suspect that from the
+first her effect on him had been conscious, deliberate.  There was no
+true simplicity in her.  Yet with what engaging charm she could
+affect simplicity, the better to secure her hold on him.
+
+Since his return, since he had been able to see her as she was, he
+had perceived that she represented, in subtle gracious guise, an
+appeal which, in its more obvious forms, he had successfully
+withstood.  For this, for the glamour, the unsatisfying charm of the
+mere courtesan--so he labelled her in his bitterness--he had flung
+aside a real woman; one of the few, as Keith had said, who are a
+visible guarantee of God.  He had dropped the substance to catch at a
+shadow: and now, too late, the horrors and splendours of war, the
+shining faith and saintliness of one small French nun, had renewed a
+right spirit within him and opened his eyes to the truth.
+
+It was the cruelest knowledge of his life.  Even the crippling of his
+manhood seemed a small thing beside that other loss for which he
+alone was to blame.
+
+Strange how vivid was the feel of her in absence!  How near she had
+drawn to him in France!  And Bel, not seen, eluded him utterly.
+Proof--he knew it now--that she was but the fair semblance of
+reality; while Sheila, like the King's daughter, was "all glorious
+within."  Six months ago, she might have been his for the asking.
+And she would have stood by him, stood by him to the end----
+
+
+Towards morning, he slept heavily for an hour; and woke with a dead
+weight on heart and brain: a weight, beyond his power to shift, that
+seemed steadily pressing him down, down into the depths----
+
+In this state Dr. Norton found him; and, after some fifteen minutes
+of very lop-sided talk, he said decisively: "Sir Mark, I've come to
+the conclusion we can't keep you here your full time.  The sooner we
+get you out of Town the better."
+
+"Home?" Mark asked, a glimmer of hope in his voice.
+
+"I'm afraid--not yet.  But a move in that direction.  'Mavins,' in
+Surrey; a beautiful old place.  Perhaps you know it?"
+
+Mark nodded.
+
+"Sir Howard Meredith has given it over to convalescents like
+yourself, who need mental as well as physical healing.  I'll ring
+them up.  Move you to-day, if possible.  You'll go quite comfortably
+by motor ambulance."
+
+"Thanks."
+
+The veil of indifference had fallen again.  "Anything's
+preferable--to this."
+
+"Cheer up, then, and give yourself a chance," Norton commanded
+briskly; but he walked down the passage with an anxious line between
+his brows.
+
+He found Macnair and Lady Forsyth in the sitting-room, and wasted no
+words in vain preliminaries.
+
+"My patient's all to pieces," he announced bluntly.  "Nerves in a
+rotten state.  What have you been doing to him these two days?"
+
+Helen briefly explained the situation and Bel's latest move.
+
+As the doctor listened, anxiety gave place to anger.
+
+"Good Lord!  As if he hadn't enough against him!  I've distrusted
+that young lady and her silky manners from the start.  Seen too many
+of her kind, in hospitals, smoking cigarettes with wounded officers,
+under the impression that they are doing their 'bit' for their
+country.  He's well rid of her; but this is a critical moment for any
+fresh upset."
+
+He proceeded to unfold his plan; and to them he explained more fully
+that "Mavins" was more a home for nerve-shattered officers.  There
+Sir Mark would be in the best possible hands; noted specialists,
+professors of psychology; and there was no reason to suppose that he
+might not pull round completely, in time.
+
+"We'll move him to-day if we can," Norton concluded, addressing Lady
+Forsyth.  "His best chance just now is to get right away from
+everything and everyone associated with this business;
+especially--from you!"
+
+She managed to smile.  "Oh, I know, I'm the fatal one----"
+
+"Because he cares for you most," Norton reminded her in a gentler
+tone.  Then he went off to make the necessary arrangements.
+
+After a good deal of telephoning, matters were settled.  Mark would
+leave in the early afternoon.  Dr. Norton, meanwhile, had discovered
+that Macnair was a personal friend of Professor Langton, the great
+psychologist.  On the strength of this he proposed that Keith should
+go down with Mark and stay a few days till he felt settled in his new
+surroundings.
+
+Mark, himself, took no visible interest in it all.  He seemed to have
+slipped hopelessly out of reach.
+
+After lunch his mother came in for a few minutes to say good-bye; and
+there on his table lay an open note in Bel's handwriting.  For a
+moment it startled her: then she remembered his quixotic gift.
+
+"May I?" she asked, and he nodded.
+
+Bel's acknowledgment was brief and, as usual, effective.
+
+
+"Coals of fire on my head.  How exactly like you!  And--what can one
+say, except that my utter unworthiness is the measure of my
+gratitude.--BEL."
+
+
+"Posing to the last!" was Lady Forsyth's enraged reflection.  "That's
+the best place for it," she said aloud; and tearing it across, she
+flung it in the fire.
+
+Mark, leaning back against his cushions watched it burn.
+
+Helen was watching his face.  It showed no glimmer of feeling.  Then,
+anxiety and curiosity so pricked her that she ventured a question.
+
+"Darling," she said, a hand on his shoulder, "I'm puzzled.  Is this
+fresh trouble--altogether Bel?"
+
+"N--no.  Not the way you mean.  Still--she's responsible----"
+
+His brows twitched.  He seemed to force the words out, frowning at
+the fire.
+
+Then, unexpectedly, he looked up at her, a strange, wild light in his
+eyes.  "Mums, it's--oh God! ... It's _everything_!"
+
+To that heart-piercing cry there could be only one answer.  Stooping
+over him, she kissed him, holding him close; and he, with sudden
+fervour, returned her kiss, clutching her hand as if he could not
+bear to let it go.
+
+So they parted, with never a word; and her question remained
+unanswered;--the puzzle still unsolved.
+
+Keith went with him, as arranged.  Sheila was presumably chained to
+Westover; and Helen, with heart and hope near breaking-point, was
+left utterly alone.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK IV
+
+VIA LUCIS
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+"So shall he read elder truths, grand truths, fearful truths.  And so
+shall our mission be accomplished, that from God we had--to plague
+his heart till we had unfolded the capacities of his spirit."--OUR
+LADY OF SORROWS.
+
+
+Mavins, like Wynchcombe Friars, was set upon a ridge; but the house
+was comparatively modern and here was no falling and rising sea of
+pine-tops splashed in dark foam against the sky.  Lawns and
+shrubberies ended in a low brick wall matted with arabis and
+aubretia.  And beyond the wall lay Surrey, and again more Surrey,
+merging into Sussex: gentle undulations, interlacing ridges and, in
+the clear weather, the sweeping line of the Downs, mistily blue along
+the horizon.  When the wind was in the south, Sir Howard Meredith
+would call upon his visitors to note the whiff of sea-salt in the
+air: and those who were sufficiently imaginative would scent that
+phantom whiff with enthusiasm.
+
+But there was, now, no host at Mavins, though there were many guests.
+For Sir Howard had entirely devoted his beautiful place to those
+that--excepting prisoners--were perhaps the saddest aftermath of war
+as conceived and waged by modern Germany: men broken in nerve and
+spirit; strong men, shaken by dreams and delusions, who dreaded the
+night and cried out in their sleep; men, who sat alone and wept,
+quietly, hopelessly, because their manhood was gone from them, and
+with it, their power of self-control.  One there was, a mere boy of
+two and twenty, crazed permanently, the doctors feared, because he
+had seen a lad of his own platoon crucified with indignity by German
+soldiers; and--he could not forget.  That was the secret torment of
+so many who came out of the trenches seemingly unscathed:--they could
+not forget.  Mark knew.  It had been the chief of his own troubles in
+that backwater in France.
+
+Yet now, for a time, under the deadening influence of nervous
+depression, he lived and moved among these tragic fellow-sufferers
+almost as though they were not.  The first few weeks of isolation
+from all he loved, drifted by like a timeless, colourless dream.  He
+seldom opened a paper or troubled to read his letters.  He wrote
+none, and hardly a trace remained of his keen interest in the war.
+He learnt with blank indifference, that the Russian "steam-roller"
+was rolling to some purpose through Galicia, that the first Zeppelins
+had arrived in England and dropped bombs on the east coast.  Even the
+more personal news of Ralph's gallant death in action scarcely seemed
+to reach him.
+
+It was the crazed boy and his story that gave him the first sharp
+twinge of pain--herald of returning life.
+
+He heard it from Honor Lenox, Maurice's elder sister.  She was at
+Mavins that winter, doing V.A.D. work, to which she had devoted
+herself unremittingly since the outbreak of war.  As hospital
+orderly, she had been through the siege of Antwerp and the retreat
+upon Ostend.  She had ministered to stunned and starving refugees,
+had earned conspicuous distinction in advance ambulance work, and had
+lately been decorated by the King.  A brief collapse, following on
+those strenuous months in Flanders, obliged her for the moment, to be
+content with lighter work at home: and Mark, on arrival, had been
+practically given into her charge.
+
+She was a tall, plain girl, strikingly plain: with her father's
+rough-cut features and clear northern eyes.  The two were already
+acquainted: and Mark, in his present mood, found refreshment in her
+bluntness and dry humour and strong, unbeautiful face.  The normal
+Mark did not suffer plain women gladly.  But at the moment it was
+Honor's chief asset that she was neither fair, fascinating nor
+conspicuously a woman.  The revulsion--as Keith had prophesied--was
+complete.
+
+There was virtue also in her sane, soldierly attitude towards the
+war.  She neither denounced it as "devilish and senseless," nor
+harped morbidly on horrors.  She had seen both sides of the shield.
+She knew--as he knew--that from the pains of hell spring the
+splendours of sacrifice and devotion: that the true peace which
+passes understanding is not the prerogative of the shirker and the
+pacifist; that in the trenches and even in the shambles of a modern
+battlefield, "Death rages but he does not reign."  There you have,
+perhaps, the main distinction between those who have been in the
+firing line and those who have not: between the soldiers who have
+resisted unto blood, and the ineffectives--willing and
+unwilling--obsessed by casualty lists, atrocities and shattered men.
+That spirit Mark chiefly associated with Bel: and he was the more
+thankful to find no trace of it in the daughter of Sir Eldred Lenox.
+
+Not that she soothed him with fairy tales.  On the contrary, she
+recounted, purposely and in plain terms, many of her worst
+experiences; probing him with stiletto pricks of pain sharper than
+his own; if so be that she might stab his spirit broad awake.
+
+It was his unnatural indifference to Ralph's death that had prompted
+her to tell him in full the pitiful tale of that crazed subaltern: a
+brilliant Oxford scholar, whose brain had been unhinged not by the
+normal rigours of war but by the abnormal cruelty of scientifically
+dehumanised German soldiers.  The telling of it pained her horribly;
+and the hearing of it hurt Mark as nothing had hurt him yet since
+that night when the sword of realisation pierced his soul.
+
+Manlike, pain vented itself in anger.  Why the dickens did she talk
+about such beastliness? he demanded irritably: and she knew she had
+touched a vulnerable spot.
+
+"I don't--as a rule," she said without apology.  "But, now and then,
+something goads me to remind myself and others that this isn't an
+ordinary war.  It's a crusade against organised powers of evil.  It
+makes vengeance almost a sacred duty.  And we've got to realise
+things like that--however much we shrink from them--in order to crush
+out, absolutely, the spirit that makes them possible."
+
+There was no fervour, no touch of the didactic in her quiet, rather
+flat voice.  It spoke, with deep conviction, the very thoughts that
+had burned in his own brain after hearing the story of "la petite
+Pauline"; and for the first time the real Mark looked with real
+interest at Maurice's sister.
+
+"That's so," he agreed gruffly.  "Not much use though for the poor
+crocked-up devils who can't help any more."
+
+She looked back at him in her direct, masculine fashion.  A smile
+hovered in her eyes.  "There are crocks _and_ crocks!" she said.
+"And there are other ways besides fighting.  Think them over.  You'll
+find it as good as a tonic."
+
+He did think them over: and it was as good as a tonic.  He reverted
+more than once to the subject of young Carmichael.  Was there no
+hope?  A shadow of hope, Honor told him.  His mother--who came at
+intervals--was heart-broken.
+
+That last bit of information took effect, as intended.  Mark began to
+talk of his own mother.  He also began to think about Ralph and
+Sheila.  He wondered....  He wanted to know....
+
+By slow degrees, light was breaking through the fog that shrouded his
+spirit.  Then came Sheila's letter about Ralph, that let in quite a
+painful flood of sensation.
+
+
+"I wonder, have they told you," she wrote, "that my Ralph has had the
+honour of dying for his country?  It was an honour he coveted with
+all his heart; and they say he came by it splendidly.  I promised him
+long ago that, if this happened, I would not grieve nor wear
+mourning.  But, oh Mark (if you are really waking up again), you will
+know, better than any one but Mums, how blank everything feels some
+days when pride seems no prop at all and there is simply the
+emptiness--the longing----.
+
+"He was the one bit of home that seemed really to belong.  I know to
+the outside world he seemed just a very ordinary subaltern
+overburdened with brains.  But I'm sure England need think no shame
+of her very ordinary subalterns judging from their record in war.
+
+  'To sacrifice she prompts her best,
+  She reaps them as the sower reaps.'
+
+That's Meredith, isn't it?  It has the sound of him.  Mother has
+really been wonderful in refusing to let our private sorrow interfere
+with her work.  She says we are all dedicated--with an extra big D.
+You know her way.  But it is not all talk.  She's proved that these
+last few weeks.  Dear Mark, forgive if my letter makes you sad.  It's
+only to you two I can say a little of what I feel--on the bad days.
+In between, I can go quietly on and be grateful for my gift, such as
+it is, and pray that you may soon be home again to cheer the brave
+Mums in her great loneliness!  I go to her whenever I can.  Mr.
+Macnair is ambulance driver in France again.  I do wish he would come
+back.  And oh--a fresh trouble.  My dear Mona is very ill with
+typhoid at Boulogne.  I long to go to her.  But I'm badly wanted
+here.  Isn't your right arm well enough yet to manage a letter?  Mums
+tells me she hasn't heard.  Half a dozen lines, the merest scrawl
+even, would cheer her ever so.  Do try.  Yours always, Sheila."
+
+
+That letter gave him a sudden blessed sense of enlargement; as if a
+window had been opened in his brain.  It also pricked his awakening
+conscience: and he did try, with very fair success.
+
+Surely and steadily his right hand regained its cunning: and even the
+tentative return of power feelingly persuaded him that this skilled
+servant of his brain, was worth all the rest of his body put
+together.  After all, he had willed to risk everything; to give
+everything.  He had recognised that the price of patriotism might be
+a very long price: but he had never dreamed of paying it in this form.
+
+He tried to express some of these thoughts in a long outpouring to
+that brave lonely mother he had treated so ill.  He also attempted a
+letter to Sheila: but the only thing he really wanted to tell her was
+the one thing that must never be told.
+
+Having written the words: "My dear Sheila," he sat there, pen in
+hand, cursing the fate that forbade him to add, "I love you--I love
+you--I love you."  Simply that.  The sheer relief of it!
+
+Suppose he did--what would her answer be?
+
+Oh--coward and fool!  Apart from every other disability how could he
+account for Bel?
+
+In the end he wrote to her at some length of Ralph and Mona and Mums.
+It frightened him afterwards to realise how near he had come to the
+cliff's edge.
+
+Sheila's mention of Mona set him thinking of Maurice.  Queer that
+Miss Lenox had never mentioned him.  Next time they were alone
+together he spoke of Mona's illness and asked after her brother.
+
+Honor's face clouded a little.
+
+"My poor Maurice," she said, "was not made for great days or terrible
+events.  He has had a bitter bad time.  It has broken him to pieces.
+And Father, who is always rather down on him, takes it very hard.
+There are the Desmond boys winning decorations--and his own eldest
+son----"
+
+"How about his eldest daughter?" Mark asked smiling.
+
+"Oh--she's a faint consolation!  But not quite the same thing.
+Dick's doing good work in the Flying Corps, which is much more to the
+point."
+
+"But Maurice--where is he, poor chap?  There's good stuff in him if
+he isn't a fighter.  I'd like to hear more."
+
+So she told him more; glad of his increasing concern for others;
+though it went hard with her to speak freely of anything so near her
+heart.  Maurice, it seemed, had returned to the Front after a
+fortnight in the hospital where Mona worked and a week at home.
+
+"In love with her--is he?" Mark asked.
+
+"Yes.  Very much so.  That made a fresh jar with Father.  He's
+devoted to Colonel and Mrs. Laurence.  But he could not bear the idea
+of Dr. Videlle's daughter marrying his son; though he wouldn't have
+Mrs. Laurence know that for the world.  It was a most awkward tangle.
+Father objected and Maurice insisted; and it quite spoilt the poor
+boy's crumb of leave.  Then he had an awful spell in the trenches.
+His letters to me--" she paused to steady her lips.  "I think--he was
+thankful when he got hit.  But it's his right hand--badly damaged----"
+
+"Oh Lord!  D'you mean--he may lose it?"
+
+"I'm not sure.  They still hope to save it--partially.  He's back at
+Boulogne.  The same hospital.  His poor nerves worse than ever.
+Mother's out there too."
+
+"And Mona?"
+
+Honor was silent a moment; then she said in a quiet, toneless voice:
+"Mona ... is dead.  I only heard yesterday!"
+
+"Good God!"  Mark's voice was hushed also.  He wanted to say more.
+Miss Lenox was evidently upset.  But before he found the adequate
+word, she was speaking again in the same level tone.
+
+"It is sometimes difficult, in these days, to go on believing that
+God is good.  Maurice knew--she cared.  He spoke to her a few days
+before she fell ill.  It gave him such a lift.  And now--he's half
+crazed, Mother says.  They talk of sending him here.  I hope they
+will.  Professor Langton is working marvels."
+
+They did send him to Mavins, with the remains of his right hand in a
+sling.  The bulk of it had been saved.  Only the little finger and
+half the forefinger were gone: so that eventually, with practice, he
+would draw and paint again.  But at present no word of comfort could
+reach his half-distracted brain.  All day long he talked wildly and
+rapidly of Mona; and at night he could not sleep for dreams.  A
+troublesome case; not an obstinate one, the friendly Professor of
+Psychology told Honor; but it was not advisable at present to let him
+see much of his sister or his friend.
+
+Meanwhile the girl devoted herself to Sir Mark, and found no small
+comfort in his gradual progress toward a saner, happier mood of mind.
+
+Keith--definitely back from France--came to see him oftener now, and
+they talked of Sheila.  To Mark the mere sound of her name was like
+the music of running water in a barren land.  It struck him that
+Keith seemed to be a good deal at Westover Court; and he fell to
+wondering about "Mums."  Because he, Mark, had not been knocked out,
+did the queer fellow mean to keep silence for ever?
+
+It also struck him as strange that his mother had never been to see
+him.  At last he asked for her; and she came, straightway, on the
+wings of the first available express.  Resolutely she had held to her
+hard resolve not to go near him till he needed her; and now she had
+her reward.  He said little, but his hand clutched hers; and his
+eyes, that had a gleam of the old light in them, followed her
+wherever she moved.
+
+"Come again soon,"  he said at parting; and she came again soon....
+
+
+So February slipped by; and light increased without and within.  Far
+away, in the Mediterranean, by way of prelude to the splendid and
+terrible Gallipoli adventure, British warships were lobbing shells
+into the forts along the Narrows: and cheerful prophets predicted the
+fall of Constantinople within a month.  And still, across the
+Channel, the interminable underground war dragged on.  And still a
+sanguine Government did its casual best to defeat the frankly
+malignant German with the maximum of polite consideration; to which
+end, Ministers temporised, fatally, over conscription and enemy
+aliens and high explosives and other awkward trifles that involved
+the removal of kid gloves.  And the voice of criticism and
+division--hushed in the inaugural days of 1914--was once more heard
+in the land.
+
+And still, week after week, War--that is no respecter of
+Governments--exacted its inexorable toll of the young and the
+incomparably brave; and the fearful also: and from Germany came the
+cry of the prisoners--starved, tortured, yet unbroken--"How long, O
+Lord, how long!"
+
+Each dawn brought some new shock of grief to hundreds of hearts;
+brought also its golden grain of healing to those already stricken----
+
+At Mavins, as the days grew longer and milder, healing came gradually
+both to Maurice and Mark.
+
+Maurice's mercurial nature had responded more rapidly to both
+atmosphere and treatment than the doctors had dared to hope.  He
+talked less and slept more.  The strange, unseeing stare went out of
+his eyes; and there came a day when Langton--who looked favourably on
+Miss Lenox--declared that it rested with her to complete his cure.
+
+Events justified him; and Mark found a new interest not untinged with
+envy, in watching the two together.  The very qualities that made for
+discord between Maurice and his father, seemed to link the brother
+and sister in a bond closer than common.  It set Mark thinking of
+Ailsa and wondering--would he eventually arrive at accepting Sheila
+in that relation, the only one now possible between them.
+Increasingly he longed to see her.  But she did not come and he would
+not ask.
+
+In this fashion February drew to an end and Dr. Norton came down to
+inspect his former patient.  In his old guarded manner, he expressed
+himself satisfied with Mark's general condition; and confirmed the
+opinion of his colleague at Mavins that improvement, slight yet
+unmistakable, had already begun.  But how far it might ultimately go,
+not a doctor among them would venture to prophesy yet.  Mark's
+nerves, at all events, were obviously on the mend.  For a time, they
+told him, he must "go softly" and keep clear of worry or strain.  The
+more normal his life and surroundings, the better his chance of
+complete mental readjustment; and there was talk of going home before
+long.
+
+That, unquestionably, was a move in the right direction: and yet--he
+felt half afraid.  Coward selfishness whispered that, in this
+peaceful backwater, "things" were easier to bear.  Manhood urged that
+he had been long enough on the shelf.  It was high time to rouse
+himself and give his country such service as he could; to conquer a
+certain morbid dread of facing his own world--in a wheeled chair.
+
+He did some hard and wholesome thinking on the subject while Maurice,
+in the transition stage, claimed the chief part of Honor's attention;
+and he discovered that here was the secret of his faint reluctance to
+go home, though well he knew that his mother was counting the days to
+his return.
+
+He made that unheroic discovery on the last day of February, a day of
+fugitive, appealing beauty.
+
+With the help of the despised wheeled chair--that gave him a small
+measure of freedom--he had established himself in his special corner
+of the grounds, at the far end of the long low wall looking southward
+across Surrey and Sussex to the sea.  The February sun was warm as
+April.  Close to him loomed a wide-spreading yew, centuries old.  In
+the shadow of its blackness snowdrops gleamed; and on its uppermost
+branch sat a thrush, pouring out a torrent of song.  Almost, in
+response to that brave music, Mark could feel the earth stirring in
+her sleep, even as his own benumbed spirit was stirring within him
+after the darkest winter he had ever known.  A light breeze blew from
+the south.  Stately masses of cloud drifted across the heavens; the
+Downs--grey-blue, against a toneless horizon--seemed astonishingly
+near....
+
+Mark, brooding on them, recalled Meredith's phrase: "The Downs have
+swiftness."  They set a man longing for a winged horse or for the
+Seven-League boots.  At first he had hardly been able to bear the
+sight of them.  He was learning to bear it now; even as he was
+learning to accept cheerfully, almost gratefully, quite a number of
+things that in the beginning had seemed unendurable.  He was
+discovering, at first hand, the amazing adaptability of the human
+organism and the native resilience of his own spirit.  There were
+black moods still, when the curses came.  But these were increasingly
+offset by moods of high-hearted resolve to fling into his art all the
+energy and passion of his stultified life: moods far truer to his
+essential self; likelier therefore to endure.
+
+And on this February day of drifting cloud and snowdrops and a
+jubilant thrush, the more normal Mark held the field.
+
+For an hour and a half, to his great satisfaction, he had been left
+alone with his sketch-book and Meredith's _Nature Poems_--a
+favourite, illustrated edition--and his own resurgent thoughts.  He
+knew now, definitely, that his time at Mavins was nearing an end.
+Dr. Carstairs had spoken yesterday of a week or ten days.  That fact
+alone served to stiffen his manlier resolves.
+
+And there was also another fact; quite unlooked-for, decidedly
+stimulating.  Miss Lenox had discovered it in the _Times_ that
+morning under the heading of "Army Honours."  It notified the award
+of the Distinguished Service Order to Lieut. Sir Mark Stuart Forsyth:
+and, from the bone-dry record appended, Mark made the surprising
+discovery that on two occasions he had "exhibited conspicuous
+coolness and courage."  Once, by his intrepid leading, he had carried
+a full trench against overwhelming odds: an unpleasant business, he
+remembered it very well.  Another time during a retreat, when one
+flank of the battalion had been left in the air, he had, it seemed,
+held on tenaciously to a critical position and saved the regiment
+from annihilation.  That must have been on the terrible last day of
+his recollection, when he had himself been annihilated for his pains.
+
+Baldly set down, it struck him as very ordinary average behaviour in
+the circumstances.  Quite likely poor old Maurice had been just as
+sporting now and then.  Only no one happened to notice.  It was all a
+matter of luck and partiality.  A war that rained shells, rained
+decorations--naturally enough.  It was very gratifying all the same,
+to have "stopped one": to possess a lasting memento of his own brief
+strenuous flash of effort.
+
+And what did it amount to after all?  For sixty days--whether in
+billets or trenches, or in the stress of actual fighting--he had
+lived at the full stretch of his being.  He had quailed and suffered
+and exulted.  He had seen with his eyes that, in nature and in human
+nature, beauty shines out undimmed, though all the devils of hell are
+leagued for its extinction.  He had proved, in his own body and soul,
+that "in war man values the power which it affords to life of rising
+above life."
+
+And now--this!
+
+He glanced ruefully at the fur rug over his knees.  Well, it was just
+a question whether those sixty days were not worth a lifetime of
+limitation.  But--the loss of Sheila!  There was the rub....
+
+With a deliberate wrench he shifted his thoughts back to their
+starting-point--those three proud letters after his name.  He must
+write to the Colonel--and to "Mums."  No doubt she had been secretly
+watching that list for weeks!  And now there would be no holding her.
+A wonder she had not wired already.  She would need repressing badly;
+or goodness knew what manner of fool she would make of him.  He had
+been a beast to her all these weeks.  He would atone for it when he
+got home.  Then days seemed suddenly an intolerable time to wait.
+Impatience stirred in him: the best possible sign.  He shook himself
+mentally--he had been mooning long enough;--and picked up his book
+again.
+
+It was open at "The Thrush in February."  Nothing like Meredith for
+tuning up the strings of a man's spirit: and this particular poem
+vibrates with the morning quality of his genius; his sane loyalty to
+Earth--Mother and Slayer in one.
+
+He read on, now, from the point at which his personal affairs had
+intruded on the poet's thought.
+
+  "She, judged of shrinking nerves, appears,
+  A Mother whom no cry can melt;--
+  A slayer, yea, as when she pressed
+  Her savage to the slaughter-heaps.
+  To sacrifice she prompts her best;
+  She reaps them as the sower reaps.
+  But read her thought; to speed the race--
+  And stars rush forth of blackest night...."
+
+Again Mark paused, pondering those vigorous lines that might well
+have been written in this year of turmoil; of evil, self-exposed and
+rampant, that it may be the more squarely smitten.  "To speed the
+race," at no matter what cost of individual life, individual pain:
+there you have the hard paradox of Nature, underlying every form of
+human activity; but focused, intensified, and poignantly realised
+when "God holds his assizes and hurls the nations on one another."
+
+If a cog in the machinery is broken, what matter?  There are scores
+of others available.  It has given its mite of service toward the
+progress of the whole.  But this particular cog was not altogether
+useless even now; for the which compensation God be praised.
+
+To that mountain-top of philosophy Mark had clambered painfully
+enough: and to-day he caught an echo of it, clear and heartening, in
+the song of the poet and the song of the thrush----
+
+At this point he became aware of approaching footsteps and voices.
+The thrush became aware of them also and took flight.
+
+They drew nearer; and their owners came into view: Keith, Mums,
+Sheila,--all three of them, with Maurice and his sister.  Now he knew
+why there had been no telegram.  Just like her.  He might have
+guessed.
+
+Closing his book, he waved a welcome and his mother hurried forward.
+
+"A surprise visit of congratulation, darling," she explained
+superfluously.  "Well done!"
+
+And she kissed him, unashamedly, before them all.  There were moments
+when the Irish streak in her carried the day.  There were also
+moments when even a son could not find it in his heart to be
+repressive.
+
+Mark had enough ado to repress himself, when Sheila stood before him,
+her soft, cool hand in his; and Keith demanded gravely what the
+dickens he meant by giving his family such a shock: and Maurice, the
+born talker, looked on enviously and said nothing.
+
+The happy event, the sunshine and the smell of spring in the air went
+to their heads like wine.  It was as if some tension within had
+snapped.  They talked nonsense once again with zeal and fluency; and
+Mark himself was as foolish as any of them.  It was a vast relief,
+after those endless grey weeks when humour--the star of life--had
+dwindled to a farthing dip in the outer dark.  Now it sparkled again,
+clear as ever: and Mark found it very good....
+
+Then, quite casually, in the middle of it all, Keith slipped in his
+own surprise contribution, that had been kept a profound secret
+during its incubation.  It consisted of a small motor car, specially
+designed, light and easy to handle, in which--Mark with Keith's
+help--could drive about his beloved country, and regain a measure of
+the independent movement so dear to his heart.  Keith himself was
+responsible for the thought, but the car was to be a combined gift
+from all three; the outward and visible sign of their joy in his
+return.
+
+Mark--too overwhelmed for mere thanks--could only evince the
+liveliest interest in the "little beauty" and her manifold
+perfections.  From car talk they drifted naturally to ambulance
+driving and an exchange of experiences between Honor and Keith.  Even
+Maurice revived considerably under Lady Forsyth's sympathetic
+handling.
+
+And through it all, Mark's inner self was chiefly aware of Sheila's
+voice, too seldom heard, and Sheila's eyes--their twilight colour
+intensified by the grey-violet hat and gown that she wore in place of
+conventional mourning.
+
+She sat on the low wall, a little apart from the group round his
+chair; her sweet, serious face shadowed by the double loss of brother
+and friend.  The shadow lifted a little at sight of Mark's
+sketch-book.  With a glance at him for permission, she opened it and
+went through it slowly, lingering a long while over each page.
+
+He wanted her to himself so urgently that he wished the others at
+Jericho.  Now and again he contrived an exchange of glances.  Then he
+would hold her gaze a minute and reluctantly let her go.  He had no
+business whatever to do this: and he knew it.  But to-day he felt
+like a schoolboy out of bounds.  He refused to look beyond the
+sunshine into the waiting dark.
+
+Honor Lenox, he found, had planned a semi-secluded tea-party in a
+corner of the wide verandah,--the real Indian article; added by Sir
+Howard, who declared he would as soon live without shaving-soap as
+without a verandah.  And Mark enjoyed it all consumedly, though not
+five minutes' talk did he get with Sheila alone.  Suddenly and
+surprisingly, life had righted itself in defiance of tragic
+limitations.  The good minute would pass; but the fact that it had
+come at all was of hopeful augury.  And while it lasted, Mark could
+forget everything except that he had not lost his art; and that
+Sheila, however unattainable, was part of the vital fabric of his
+life.
+
+"Will you still be at home when I come?" he asked her at parting; and
+she shook her head.
+
+"'Fraid not.  I go back on Friday, when 'Mums' goes to Lady John.
+But I'm to get leave for a visit soon, she says----"
+
+"_I_ say--" he corrected, under his breath; and again there passed
+between them that flash of understanding; a direct contact of spirit
+with spirit, never achieved in all his passionate courtship of Bel.
+
+Oh, that he could banish her from his memory as though she had never
+been!
+
+But Bel would not let herself be so easily forgotten.  Though
+disenchantment was complete, she could still reassert herself, at
+inopportune moments, to tarnish a love so different in quality that
+there was need of some other name to call it by.
+
+
+These thoughts visited him much later on that same evening, as he sat
+beside his fire reviewing the events of a day that marked a definite
+step towards the recovery of his spiritual balance; of a normal, if
+tempered, thankfulness for all that still remained to him of joy in
+life.
+
+Lately Maurice had taken to looking in at this time for a talk; and
+he very soon appeared, with the inevitable cigarette and a rather
+doleful countenance.
+
+For a while he sat smoking moodily, staring at the fire.  Then, to
+Mark's surprise, he said in a constrained voice: "I suppose Honor
+told you--about Mona."
+
+"Yes."  Mark did his best to convey his own dumb depth of
+fellow-feeling in that one word.  Maurice let out a great sigh.
+
+"She--cared.  She'd have married me, Father or no.  Seeing Miss
+Melrose brought it all back again.  She ... Mona ... understood.
+_She_ didn't think me a hopeless rotter because I've been a bit
+broken up by this cursed, inhuman war."
+
+That tone towards the world's greatest crusade against machine-made
+tyranny and brutality jarred Mark always.  And it savoured too much
+of Bel.
+
+"Not a bit of use cursing the war, old chap," he said kindly.
+"Nearer the mark to curse the apostles of cheapness for cheapness'
+sake, who thwarted Joe Chamberlain, killed our economic independence,
+and delivered the Empire into the tentacles of the German octopus.
+But it's all done now; and we've just got to put our backs into it
+and pull things through.  You've done your level best, Maurice, and
+no one thinks you a hopeless rotter.  _I_ don't.  Your sister
+doesn't.  Your mother----?"
+
+Maurice frowned.  "I'm hanged if I know what Mother thinks.  She's
+awfully fond of me.  But she's not the soft kind.  And she hugely
+admires the genuine man of action; which accounts for my splendid but
+rather formidable father.  _He_ thinks me the out and outest rotter
+that ever stepped.  If it wasn't for Honor, God knows where I'd be at
+this moment.  And, as for going home--I believe a week of it would
+simply smash me up again.'
+
+"'M.  I know what you mean.  Why not come along to my place when
+you're quit of this?  We've both got to make a fresh start somehow;
+and I've still to complete your conversion to Beauty and the
+Classics!"
+
+"D'you _mean_ that?" Maurice asked in genuine delight.
+
+"Rather.  It would give me a spurt.  And your sister could come for
+weekends.  She's a rare good sort."
+
+"Wish I had half her pluck.  She ought to have been the soldier.  I
+believe she'd give her eyes to take my place; and here am
+I--wondering if they've lopped and chopped my precious hand enough to
+keep me out of those unholy trenches for good."
+
+Mark, scanning his friend's rueful profile, decided that mere
+sympathy was not the tonic for his complaint.
+
+"You can't shoot without your trigger finger," he remarked in
+practical tones.  "But that's no matter, now they've given you a
+commission."
+
+Maurice grimaced.
+
+"You don't want to go back--in any capacity, eh?" Mark asked casually.
+
+"No.  I'm damned if I do.  Honestly, d'you suppose any man does who
+has a grain of sensibility in his composition?"
+
+Mark was silent a moment, considering.
+
+"I don't know.  Hard to say.  In either case, they wouldn't shout it
+from the housetops.  Personally, I was keen to get back.  Sheer
+perversity, perhaps: but it's true.  God knows, killing and getting
+killed, the way it's done now, is a pretty gruesome business.  But
+exterminating Prussianised Germans is a service to the civilised
+world; not to mention a man's first duty to his country.  And to me
+there's beauty everywhere, Maurice, even on a battle-field.  And, oh
+Lord, it's big.  It's _real_--overpoweringly real."  He paused and
+set his teeth hard.  "I simply hate being out of it all--shelved.
+Wish to God I was in your case!  And you can't have the face to
+pretend you'd sooner be--as I am."
+
+Maurice was lighting a fresh cigarette.
+
+"Honour bright," he said, "I was thinking out there, this afternoon,
+what a lucky devil you were!"
+
+Mark flashed round on him.  "Lucky--_me_?"
+
+"Yes: as things go these days.  You're through with the worst of it.
+You've done jolly well.  Your people think no end of you and you'll
+probably do thundering big things once you get started again.  As for
+me----"
+
+"As for _you_," Mark's friendly tone had a touch of sternness,
+"you're a graceless ingrate.  Your hand's been saved.  You've
+everything before you and your spurs still to win.  Strikes me, the
+sooner I get on with your conversion, all round, the better!"
+
+
+But later, when Maurice had gone, those astonishing words "lucky
+devil" returned and walked to and fro in his brain and flashed light
+into dark corners, where for weeks no light had been.  His own
+tragedy had seemed to him a thing so absolute that he had forgotten
+in his misery, the relative nature of all sensation: and he frankly
+admitted, now, that "as these times go" a worse fate might have
+befallen him.  On the wings of imagination, he had explored the long
+unchanging road ahead of him--and had found it too hard to travel.
+And again he had forgotten that the actual journey must be taken day
+by day, mile by mile; that, imperceptibly, the face of that road
+would change, in response to his own unconquered spirit and the
+healing influence of time.
+
+Life, that is more inexorable than death, cannot away with that
+crowning mercy.  The veiled hours come to us single file.  Were it
+not so, which of us would find courage to face them at all?  In war,
+and in the anguish of blows that shatter faith and courage, it is
+perhaps this crowning mercy that withholds tortured humanity from
+running headlong down a steep place into the sea----
+
+Mark sat late that night over the red embers of his fire, smoking ...
+pondering....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+  "Even the wise man's feet are turned astray
+      by tumult of the soul."
+                                          PINDAR.
+
+
+On a certain afternoon of March, Lady Forsyth sat in a third-class
+carriage of a certain casual train that loafed along the line, these
+disorganised days, between Waterloo and Westover.  She religiously
+travelled third now, and as religiously put the difference into her
+war-purse for prisoners.  Mark was not told, lest he prove
+unmanageable: and Keith's objections had been overruled with a high
+hand.
+
+This particular train was the slowest in the day.  Helen never
+patronised it except from force of circumstances; and she
+irreverently christened it "the British Government"--not altogether
+without provocation.  For, as the War dragged inconclusively on, and
+Germans continued to flourish in forbidden areas, in the City, and
+even in harbours of the first importance, she found herself growing
+more critical, more intolerant towards that sacrosanct institution.
+If she could be said to dislike, whole-heartedly, anything in the
+nature of a human being, it was certain supple, self-regarding
+phrase-mongers who had been overlong predominant in the Mother of
+Parliaments.
+
+Hers was not the only heart, in those anxious times, that cried out
+for a Triumvirate: a sailor, a soldier, and a genuine statesman to
+organise all the resources of a great and willing Empire for the
+salvation of the world.  But the cry went up in vain.  And still
+politicians talked and soldiers prayed for the Great Offensive, and
+the war of trenches and sectors went lumbering on.  Constantinople
+had not fallen within the given month.  A feeling hovered in the air
+that something had gone wrong with this very great adventure; that
+arrangements had been sketchy; action premature.  And there were
+uncomfortable rumours about the King of Greece----
+
+Then, suddenly, the West had leaped to life.  "Victory at last!" sang
+the posters and the headlines.  And the journalists, given a freer
+hand this time, vied with each other in chronicling Homeric feats and
+"enormous enemy losses." ...
+
+That was a week ago.  And now it appeared there had been some mistake
+about this "great and glorious victory."  One indisputable fact stood
+out--the casualty lists.  It began to look as if, after all, they
+were likely to prove the biggest thing about it.  Helen Forsyth had
+heard talk in London that she tried to dismiss as mere pessimism; but
+her instinct told her it was probably true.
+
+The train groaned and jolted to a standstill:--Little Franton.  It
+was far too courteous to overlook even the smallest thing in
+stations.  Another hour to Westover.  Lady Forsyth leaned back and
+closed her eyes.  She had had two strenuous days in town.  She was
+very tired and longing to get home--to Mark.  It was still a strange
+and wonderful fact that home should also mean Mark.  He was her
+private reason for courting the present infliction.  She had failed
+to catch an earlier express and refused to wait for a later one.  It
+was sufficiently distracting being called away for a night so soon
+after his return.  How they would laugh at her when she got back!
+And how good it was to be laughed at again: even if, in between,
+there were still moods of gloomy silence or of irritability, that
+kept her anxiety at stretch.
+
+The first few days of their frank joy in each other had been
+flawless.  And for her, there was the secret satisfaction of having
+him all to herself again, with no superfluous Bel to claim the lion's
+share of his thoughts and heart: a forgivable form of selfishness
+that perhaps only a mother can condone.  But the necessary intrusion
+of the world at large marked the beginning of trouble.  It was plain
+that he would not easily overcome a certain sensitive shrinking from
+outside people; though, in his more normal moods, he spurned this
+weakness and overrode it ruthlessly.
+
+For this reason, visitors--with the exception of Dr. Warburton and
+the Sinclairs--were not very welcome.  Warburton was on the "sick
+list" combating a severe bout of rheumatism and Sir Nevil, like Mark,
+was knocked out of the actual fighting, with a frost-bitten foot and
+his left forearm gone to save the spread of blood poisoning from a
+septic wound.  Wynchmere tenants and workers, eager to come and do
+him homage, would not be denied; and Mark himself, touched to the
+heart, was yet consumed with shyness at the prospect of facing the
+music.  A few days ago, with Keith's diplomatic help, Lady Forsyth
+had persuaded him to summon an informal afternoon gathering--the
+gamekeeper, the manager of their handicrafts colony, his better class
+tenants and their wives.  And he had been at his best: friendly,
+sympathetic, full of humorous talk.  She had only discovered the
+effort it cost him by the reaction that followed: and had reproached
+herself not a little for having pressed the point.
+
+Keith, however, insisted rightly that the sooner Mark did violence to
+his natural shrinking the sooner he would conquer it: and conquer it
+he must.  But his recurrent headaches troubled her.  She had made a
+point of seeing Dr. Norton while in town.  Her faith in him was
+implicit and his encouraging view of things had comforted her
+considerably.
+
+"Give him plenty of fresh air.  A little gentle massage.  And avoid
+friction over trifles."  That had been the great man's final
+injunction, heartily endorsed by Helen.
+
+Privately she had feared that the massage part of it might produce
+friction straightaway: and at lunch, in Mrs. Laurence's war-work flat
+(Colonel Laurence was serving in France) that fear had been
+confirmed.  Honor Lenox and Sheila, who had struck up a friendship,
+were lunching there too; and Honor bore witness that, when massage
+was prescribed at Mavins, Mark had proved intractable.
+
+"I believe if I could have done it myself," she added, "I might have
+persuaded him.  But nothing would induce him to let 'a strange woman
+maul his head.'  And they thought it unadvisable to press the point.
+But now--why not Sheila?  The very person."
+
+Naturally that had been Helen's first thought, and Sheila's also.
+But the older woman--because of her secret hope--had felt a
+scrupulous hesitancy about volunteering the suggestion; and the girl
+had her own private qualms to overcome.  Both were proportionately
+grateful for Honor's blunt directness, and common-sense, professional
+point of view.  She saw only a man in need of healing and the one
+acceptable healer happily on the spot: and on the whole, Lady Forsyth
+felt justified in taking the same view.  It had finally been decided
+that she should sound Mark on the subject and let Sheila know the
+result.
+
+After all, his complete recovery was a matter of the first
+importance.  She had no sure knowledge of Sheila's heart; and, as
+regards her own son, she was altogether in the dark.  Since that day
+at the Nursing Home, he had never mentioned Bel: and she devoutly
+hoped he never gave a thought to that devastating young woman.
+
+Only to-day, she had heard from Lyndsay Laurence that, in January,
+Bel had deserted Harry O'Neill and gone upon a protracted visit to
+friends in the west of England where Zeppelins were not.  She wasn't
+afraid of them, Mrs. Laurence had explained with a gleam in her
+serious blue eyes, she merely objected to living in a Zeppelin area
+when there were other areas available.  Further, it appeared that
+some casual word let fall by Harry had given Mr. Maitland an inkling
+of Mark's generosity.  Certainly he had spent his holidays in the
+west of England; had duly proposed to a Bel no longer penniless--and
+been rejected.  Helen was exceedingly glad to hear it.  She wondered
+if Mark would appreciate the humour of it, but dared not risk telling
+him--yet.
+
+His uncertain moods put a severer strain upon her than she would
+admit even to herself.  Even her longing to get back to him was
+secretly tinged with dread lest something should upset him and spoil
+the whole evening.  Lately, she had persuaded him to sing again; and
+sometimes, with that or her own music, she could exorcise the fiends
+that tormented him.  But if any one could spirit them away
+permanently it would be Sheila: and ... supposing things went farther
+still--well, why not?  The question had a touch of defiance, as
+though some unseen mentor had ventured a rebuke.  Mentor or no, she
+could not, or would not see any cause or just impediment.  For once
+in a way, she--who set such store by truth in the inward parts, was
+not altogether honest with herself: a pardonable lapse, in the
+circumstances.
+
+Could Mark once be made to realise that a woman loved him enough to
+marry him, disabled as he was, all his uncertain moods and
+irritations would vanish into air.  In time, she felt convinced, this
+cruel paralysis would loosen its hold on him; and if Sheila cared
+sufficiently to take all risks, whose business was it to come between
+them?
+
+But as usual she was racing ahead miles too fast.  Possibly neither
+of them cared--in that way.  Probably Mark would snub the massage
+idea.  More than probably he would now refuse to marry Sheila even if
+he loved her to distraction.  So she swung round again to those
+jarring uncertainties that threatened, almost, to spoil the joy of
+getting him back....
+
+At this point her attention was distracted from personal worries by
+women's voices opposite.  One of them she recognised: Mrs. Beck,
+proprietor of the Post Office and sweet shop at Wynchmere.  It was
+the War, of course.  People of all grades and classes could still
+talk of little else: and Helen, keeping her eyes shut, dismissed her
+own anxieties and listened.
+
+It was a compensation for the occasional discomforts of travelling
+third that one caught glimpses of the War through the eyes of working
+men and women who neither painted it all red nor garnished it with
+false sentimentalities; but accepted it--cheerfully, sullenly or
+doggedly--as one more item among the many bewildering puzzles of life.
+
+Said the voice that was not Mrs. Beck's: "Your son 'as 'e gone back
+yet to them trenches?"
+
+"No.  'E's not near fit: never was," came Mrs. Beck's emphatic tones.
+"But 'e'll be goin' sure 'nough before long."
+
+"Frettin' to get back, is he?  My word, it's no pantomime.  I got a
+brother been out since Christmas.  Up to his blessed middle in water.
+Matches an' fags too damp for strikin'.  You do 'ear some tell they
+want to go back.  An' it makes yer wonder----"
+
+"Want to go back?  O' _course_ they don't: not my boy, nor any of
+'em.'  Mrs. Beck's voice was angry now as well as emphatic.  "'Oo
+could?  Them that talks that way says it to hearten their woman
+folks.  But 'tis on'y fools as believes 'em.  And most on 'em says
+nothing.  They knows it's _djuty_.  So they shuts their teeth an'
+goes, wonderin' if they'll ever see 'ome again.  But they _says
+nothing_--not they.  It's 'ow they're made.  There was jest one o'
+mine did--once.  Pore Alf!  'E come clean through Monsse, and all
+them 'orrors without a scratch.  An' when 'e was leavin' 'ome again,
+I says to 'im, I says: '_You'll_ come back for sure.  You've a
+charmed life.'  But 'e shook 'is 'ead.  'Their turn last time.  Mine
+next,' 'e said jokin'-like.  'E knew 'e'd be took--and 'e woz.'
+
+Followed a sympathetic silence from the mere sister, and Helen--who
+remembered Alf and all the circumstances--thought shame of herself
+for allowing Mark's moods to blur the supreme fact that she had him
+safe--permanently safe--from jagged bayonets, explosive bullets, and
+all the scientific barbarities that still hurt her soul.
+
+Her one remaining treasure had not been "took."  It was enough.
+
+The leisurely train was nearing home now.  She sat up and greeted
+Mrs. Beck; and they talked Neuve Chapelle till the name-board said
+"Westover" at last.
+
+And there was Keith on the platform and Mark awaiting her in the car,
+brown and vigorous looking; quite himself again in motor-coat and
+cap.  And she felt more than ever ashamed of fitful repinings.
+
+Mark evinced his joy at her return by keeping a hand on her knee
+under the fur rug and ragging her mercilessly all the way home.  At
+dinner he was quieter, with the brooding look in his eyes that Helen
+had learnt to dread.  Afterwards Keith settled them in the
+drawing-room and went off to the library leaving them together.
+
+He had now definitely given up his ambulance work on the other side
+and divided his time between local recruiting, a committee for the
+welfare of prisoners, and a deeply thought-out treatise on the
+psychological effects of war.  Underlying all these obvious
+activities, was the cherished conviction that Helen had need of him;
+more especially in these first difficult days ... when Mark must
+learn, slowly and painfully, the art of adapting himself to his
+limited conditions of life.  He had never said another word about her
+to Mark; nor had he found the opportune moment for speaking to her
+himself.  He was hyper-fastidious in respect of that critical moment.
+Life had, so far, given him no lovelier gift than her frank
+confidence and comradeship; and he was in no hurry to risk putting
+them out of gear, even for the sake of that greater gift for which
+Mark had encouraged him to hope.  Moreover, when a lover--and that
+lover, a Scot--has kept silence for fifteen years, it is almost
+easier to go on keeping silence than to speak: and Keith Macnair was
+essentially of those who know how to wait.
+
+
+The two he had left in the drawing-room fell silent after a little
+desultory talk.  Helen could think of nothing but Sheila.  Mark's
+reviving soul was shadowed by ominous signs of failure at Neuve
+Chapelle.  Names of officers in his own battalion had been painfully
+prominent in the Roll of Honour: men he had lived with, fought with,
+and loved.  He was girding at his own inability to go out and replace
+one of them: picturing the welcome they would give him:--Mackail,
+Fordyce, the Colonel.  _His_ name was not in the list, thank God.
+Quite recently the battalion had been made up to strength and given a
+well-earned rest--only to be decimated afresh.  And no victory to
+show for it: nothing but a costly failure.  A bad omen for the Great
+Offensive that was to sweep the Germans back to the Rhine.
+
+It all hurt him so acutely that he could not manage to talk of it
+even to his mother: so he fell back on silence.
+
+His quietness was deceptive: his frown might merely mean headache.
+Helen could not know that the devil within was making peculiarly
+malignant remarks to him just then: and her very anxiety to choose
+the right moment made her almost certain to stumble on the wrong one.
+
+"Mums, will you play a little," he said at last, "if you're not too
+tired?"
+
+She was too tired and she wanted to talk about Sheila: but she did
+not say so.  If he was "brooding," music might be a wise prelude to
+speech.
+
+For a quarter of an hour or so, she played without her notes; slow
+soft music.  Preludes and Largoes.  Then she came back to the fire
+determined to hesitate no longer.  She still remained standing, one
+foot on the fender-stool.
+
+"I saw Dr. Norton to-day," she remarked casually.  "He wanted to hear
+about you--and the headaches.  Swears by two simple remedies; plenty
+of fresh air--and massage:--the nerves of the head and neck.  And
+afterwards, at the flat, Honor suggested Sheila----"
+
+Mark's frown deepened unpromisingly.
+
+"My dear Mother, _I'm_ all right.  For God's sake, don't fuss!"
+
+"Darling, I'm not fussing.  Dr. Norton prescribed it.  And Sheila did
+wonders for me--after Boulogne."
+
+"I can well believe it.  But I won't have her bothered on my account.
+She's overworked as it is."
+
+"But, Mark, she delights in it," Helen persisted fatally.  "And for
+you, of all people----"
+
+"Yes--for _me_ of all people!" Mark flung out with a sudden
+uncontrollable bitterness that effectually silenced her.  Startled by
+his vehemence, she could only stand gazing at him, pain and
+bewilderment in her eyes.  But his own pain blinded him to hers and
+he sharply turned away his head.
+
+"Oh--_don't_ look at me like that," he muttered.  "You make too much
+of things.  All those poor chaps killed and wounded out there and
+you're worrying over my twopenny headaches.  Let Sheila come--if
+she's willing and if it'll make you happy."
+
+His mother compressed her lips.  "Nothing will make me happy, Mark,"
+she said quietly, "till I see you more nearly your old self again."
+
+"Well, I'll _never_ be my old self again--if I live to be eighty:
+which God forbid!"
+
+The moment the words were out he realised their cruelty.  He felt as
+if he had struck her; and impulsively he put out his hand.
+
+But she had turned from him swiftly to hide her tears--and she was
+gone.
+
+Helpless to follow her he sat there alone with his bitterness and his
+shame and his desperate longing for Sheila, that had instinctively
+prompted him to veto his mother's tempting plan....
+
+Presently the door opened and Keith came in.  He looked grave, almost
+stern.
+
+"What have you been saying to upset Helen?" he asked bluntly.
+"Couldn't you see she was tired out?"
+
+Beneath the reproof Mark detected the unconscious, possessive note of
+the lover and responded to it straightway, incurable lover that he
+was.  His faint annoyance at being taken to task evaporated.  If any
+one had hurt Sheila as he had just hurt Mums he would have wanted to
+commit murder.
+
+"Where is she?  What's she doing?" he asked, patently contrite yet
+vouchsafing no explanation.
+
+"In the library.  She _thinks_ she's writing letters."
+
+"Did she say anything?"
+
+"Is it likely?  What did _you_ say?  That's the point."
+
+Mark frowned.  "Nothing would induce me to repeat it.  It was
+only--she got worrying over my confounded head.  Massage and that
+sort of rot.  She's keen for Sheila to come and try her hand on me."
+
+"Well--what's wrong with Sheila?"
+
+"There's nothing wrong with Sheila," Mark answered; and this time the
+lover's note was in his own voice.  "But--at the moment, everything
+was wrong with me.  And, like a coward, I let fly at Mums."
+
+Keith's eyes lightened strangely.  "Well, no matter how bad things
+are with you--and I don't belittle them--I can't have you hurting
+_her_ like that.  She's suffered more this winter than you, or any of
+us, will ever know.  Sheila's been no less than an angel of
+consolation; and if Helen wants her here, let her come.  She would
+probably do you a deal of good.  And anyway she'd be a healing
+influence in the house, which is precisely what you're both needing
+just now.  Mark, old chap, I'm not down on you.  But--_you_
+understand?"
+
+"Yes.  I understand."
+
+A pause.  Mark felt suddenly tempted, by Keith's change of tone, to
+break through his own reserve.  It would be a vast relief to tell
+Keith about Sheila and discover his unbiased view of things.  But
+Bel, though no longer loved, still left her trail over his life.
+Three months ago she was presumably all the world to him: and now--to
+make parade of his love for Sheila would seem but a poor compliment:
+an insult, almost.  Hard to make another understand that the two
+emotions had as little in common as the girls themselves.  Still
+harder to explain that strange, spiritual awakening in France.
+Obviously, the Fates had decreed that she should come.  Let her come
+then,--and chance the result.  They could have devised no finer test
+for his power of self-mastery.
+
+Keith, who shrewdly suspected the truth, adjusted a blazing log with
+his foot and said nothing.
+
+"I say, go and tell Mums I want her," Mark said suddenly; and Keith,
+with a nod of approval, went back to the library.
+
+Mark had time to grow impatient before she reappeared.  And, when she
+did come, he was tongue-tied.  He could only hold out his arms----
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+      "Through such souls alone
+  God stooping shows sufficient of his light
+  For us i' the dark to rise by."
+                                          BROWNING.
+
+
+So Sheila came again to Wynchcombe Friars--the real Wynchcombe
+Friars; no longer an empty shrine lit by twin lamps of memory and
+hope.  How gladly, how thankfully she answered that summons no one
+guessed, Mark least of all: and that fact alone made it possible to
+come.  Neither did she herself guess that Keith knew.  Her secret was
+as safe with him as in a tomb: and he it was who, three days later,
+drove out to fetch her in Mark's two-seater car, in which he was just
+beginning to reconnoitre his property and look up his tenants as of
+old.
+
+"If there was a third seat, for the inevitable attendant, I could
+have fetched her myself," he remarked casually.
+
+"We'll contrive a third seat--for these little emergencies," Keith
+promised him.  "Till then, the privilege must be mine."
+
+Mark and his mother were in the studio when sounds of arrival whisked
+Helen to her feet.  Her natural instinct was to run downstairs and
+greet them: but she was learning to restrain many such impulses that
+Mark might not too acutely feel his minor disabilities.
+
+Presently the door opened and Sheila appeared, glowing from her
+drive, violet-gowned as on the day he had seen her last: a bunch of
+violets in her squirrel cap, and distinctly dewy violets in her eyes.
+The long low room with its restful blue tones and dark oak panelling
+was flooded with March sunlight, fragrant with the scent of hyacinths
+that stood about in bowls: and to Mark, the small gallant figure of
+his first and last allegiance seemed in tune with it all, visibly and
+vitally, as Bel had never been.
+
+Sheila, for her part, would have summed up her own mixed emotions in
+the one word "home": the home of her spirit and her heart.
+
+After a swift survey of the room, her eyes rested smiling on Mark in
+his wheeled chair by the window.
+
+"The quartette complete again, at last, under one roof!" she said, a
+thrill of gladness in her low voice.  Then the underlying tragedy
+caught at her heart and she took refuge in her Viking.  "_He_ must be
+glad to have you back again.  Hasn't he told you so?"
+
+"Yes--lately he has," Mark answered, looking at her, not at the
+Viking, whom it pleased them to regard as a member of the family.
+"He was a bit reticent at first.  But the gladdest of all was Bobs,
+here.  No blooming reticence about him!"
+
+"The darling!"  And crouching down Sheila stroked the chestnut head.
+
+The devoted creature lay close pressed against his master's legs,
+using Mark's feet for a chin-rest; an endearing form of caress.  But
+Mark could not feel it any more.  He sometimes wondered--did the
+others realise?  He hoped they did not.
+
+"I thought the poor little chap would go crazy, the first day," he
+said.  "Kept flinging himself against me with his little shivering
+squeals, tearing up and down the room, sending the rugs to blazes;
+asking me, plain as speech, to get up and play the fool with him.
+Now--he understands and he's just glued to my chair.  Won't even go
+for a walk with Keith.  Yes, old man, I'm telling tales of you."
+This last to Bobs, who glanced upward without shifting his position.
+
+Sheila's eyes were so dewy by this time that she had to make the most
+of Bobs, who wanted to go to sleep again and found her attentions
+rather superfluous.  He was a man's dog, first and last.
+
+They lunched at the far end of the long room.  It was a convenient
+arrangement for Mark and it economised coal.  Every penny that could
+be saved at Wynchcombe Friars went to help Mark's poorest cottagers
+and war-increasing colony of refugees, through that first hard winter
+of war;--a prelude, merely, to the gigantic struggle ahead.  Yet
+there was still a certain amount of loose, comforting talk about the
+worst being over by the autumn.  A good deal of it emanated from
+those who were resolved to avert conscription at any price--to
+others.  "Traitors' talk," Mark called it bluntly: and in essence it
+was no less.
+
+Lunch was a brief and cheerful meal: Keith for a wonder being the
+principal talker.  He had gleaned some inside information, from a
+wounded officer at Winchester, of the dispositions at Neuve Chapelle,
+and he proceeded to demonstrate them, for Mark's benefit, with the
+toast rack, the muffineers, the cake, and several apples, blandly
+ignoring murmurs from Helen about "the geography of the table."
+
+The meal ended, he retired to the library and his treatise; and Helen
+went down to interview a refugee dressmaker; a forlorn and pathetic
+creature in whom she took a very special interest.
+
+"I'll be back soon, my lambs," she said as she went.
+
+There was a perceptible moment of embarrassment; but Sheila swiftly
+conquered her shyness.
+
+"I don't see anything new here yet," she remarked, glancing round his
+sanctuary.  "And you know I'm expecting--great things!"
+
+Mark shook his head.  "I've not touched a bit of clay or plasticine
+since I got back.  But in that folio, there's a big rough crayon of a
+charging Highlander on a bit of brown board, if you'd care to make
+his acquaintance."
+
+No need to answer that.  She had him out instantly and propped him on
+an antique table against the wall.  Rough he certainly was, but of a
+vigour and vitality that went far to justify her expectation of great
+things.  No artist by temperament, like Bel, Sheila could neither
+appraise nor criticise technically: but she had an unerring eye for
+motive, for the underlying spirit of art in all its manifestations.
+Certain sketches she had seen at Mavins and this barbaric figure that
+sprang yelling from the parapet--bayonet fixed, head back, kilt
+flying--told her that Mark's idealism had gained rather than lost by
+contact with the uglier, more staggering aspects of life and death.
+And there can be no sharper test of its quality.  Cruel things,
+tragic things, seen and suffered, had drawn his Muse closer to earth;
+had imparted a certain ruthlessness both to his manner and matter:
+but exultingly she knew that he belonged, and would unfailingly
+belong, to the great company for whom there is always a window that
+looks to the sky.
+
+"I saw him--just like that."  Mark explained to her silence.  "Five
+minutes afterwards a shell came our way--" an expressive gesture
+filled the hiatus.  "And somehow he stuck in my brain."
+
+"Yes--he would," she said, still dwelling upon him.  "Why not make a
+small statue of him?  He is simply--Scotland for ever!"
+
+Mark's eyes were on her face and her low tone thrilled through him.
+
+"He shall be yours--if I ever get him into clay.  At present ... that
+side of things seems dead."
+
+"Not dead--but sleeping," she said in her softest voice.  "It will
+all come back--bigger and more splendidly alive--when you've struck
+root again in this dear deserted place."
+
+He sighed.  "Hope you're right.  I'll need it more than ever I did,
+once I'm ... renewed mentally.  It isn't an altogether painless
+process.  And I'm no stoic----"
+
+"I expect Mums would tell a different tale," she put in gently.
+
+"Mums would glorify me--from sheer habit!  Yet it's she who gets the
+full benefit of my lapses from stoicism--bless her.  It'll be a real
+service to her if you succeed in exorcising the devil!"
+
+The light in her eyes was enough to banish all the devils in
+creation--for the moment, "_I_ don't believe in him," she said
+softly.  "I'm going to concentrate on waking up the other thing----"
+
+At this point Lady Forsyth reappeared with her knitting and her
+_National Review_.  She knitted for her war orphans now that spring
+had smiled upon the sodden trenches "out there."
+
+"Very fine, isn't it?" she said indicating the Highlander, and Sheila
+nodded.
+
+"He's going to be my first own statue: a bronze."
+
+Then they arranged Mark's invalid table and set a cushion on it.
+"There," said his mother shaking it up.--"Bow your head upon your
+arms and try not to feel heart-broken!"
+
+"Try not to feel a fool would be more like it," he grumbled
+ungratefully.  As a matter of fact he found no difficulty in obeying
+her last injunction.  But Bobs, who had been taking stock of these
+mysterious doings, had his own private opinion on the subject.
+
+Springing up, paws on the table, he anxiously investigated Mark's
+bowed head and tried to thrust a moist loving nose under his forehead.
+
+"Down, old boy, lie down," Mark muttered; and for the minute he
+obeyed.  But no self-respecting dog could submit to see his master so
+humiliated.  The call for championship was obvious.  With little
+snarling sounds, he sprang up again, snapped at Sheila's hands and
+nibbled at her ankles half playful, half vicious, and wholly
+determined to rescue his helpless owner, till Mark flung up his head
+and laughed.  "Officious little beggar!  Turn him out, please, Mums."
+He glanced at Sheila.  "I won't have you bullied.  He tried to eat
+Macgregor and Keith first time he saw them handle me."
+
+"Macgregor--your sergeant----?"
+
+"Yes.  He's knocked out too, poor chap!  Lost his foot, after all.
+But he's a sturdy fellow, so I secured him for my bodyguard and he
+was no end pleased."
+
+It was a very chastened and reproachful Bobs who at last suffered
+himself to be forcibly removed from the scene.  Mark patted his head
+by way of explanation: but the rank injustice of the whole proceeding
+must have galled his faithful soul.
+
+"Now," said Mark the ungrateful, as the door closed on his defender.
+"Go ahead.  It's not half bad!"
+
+In his heart he found in her unerring discovery and manipulation of
+each sensitive nerve little short of magic.  But that sort of thing
+could not be said.  Since his mother's concern was entirely for
+himself, his own concern must be entirely for Sheila.  His will, too
+long in abeyance, must stand between him and the temptation to
+discover, by imperceptible means, whether his defection had killed
+outright the shy response he was just beginning to discern when Bel
+appeared on the scene.  By some means he must contrive to keep the
+lover's note out of their intercourse.  He was glad at least that a
+deeper expression of brotherly tenderness had crept into his letters
+from France.  It would make things a trifle easier now.
+
+This renewal of intimacy would, he perceived, be no light ordeal; so
+closely interwoven were the strands of joy and pain.  But it was the
+price of her sweet companionship; and he would pay it willingly, just
+so long as it involved no risk for her.
+
+To-day, while her fingers made magical passes across his forehead, or
+fluttered over his head like soft, strong wings, he had need to
+reaffirm his resolve: and his best chance of keeping it, though he
+guessed it not, lay less in the strength of his own will than in
+Sheila's simplicity and singleness of heart.
+
+For nearly an hour he surrendered himself to the healing influence of
+her spirit and her touch, till definite thought was stilled and peace
+flowed through him, as in the days when Sœur Colette had kneeled
+and prayed beside his bed....
+
+Then it was over; and he was bidden to be quiet till tea-time, while
+his mother and Sheila strolled on the terrace in the sun.  Helen
+tilted back his adjustable chair, rearranged his cushion and lightly
+kissed his forehead.
+
+"Didn't I do well to insist?" she asked smiling; and he smiled back
+at her without a word.
+
+Keith came in for tea; and before it was over, Dr. Warburton
+appeared.  The illusion of old times was strong upon them all.
+Except for war-talk and Mark's wheeled chair, it was almost as if
+their summer and winter of tragic memory had never been.  But the
+fact that Sheila must leave them broke the spell.
+
+"Till Wednesday," Mark said at parting.  "And one of these days I
+swear I'll kick over the traces and come for you myself."
+
+To that announcement she had no ready-made answer at command.
+
+"It's lovely to be home again--and spoilt again," she remarked
+irrelevantly to whom it might concern.  "And remember,--_I_ expect to
+find something begun if it's only a terra-cotta trifle."
+
+
+On Wednesday she returned to find the terra-cotta trifle awaiting her
+on his modelling table that had stood empty since the outbreak of
+war.  It was a rugged and very vital study of Bobs in a gamesome
+mood; hindquarters in the air, shoulders down, head laid sideways
+between outflung paws and an upward glance of appeal from his only
+visible eye.
+
+Beneath him, on the pedestal, Mark had scratched the words: "St.
+Roberts the Blest.  An invitation to play the fool!"
+
+"Yours," he said as she stood before it, entranced.
+
+"Mark!  You don't mean it!"  But she knew very well that he did, and
+her heart sang for joy.
+
+"Done to order," he explained gravely.  "The first fruits of your
+magic."
+
+At that she took it up between her hands and held it for a moment
+against her cheek.
+
+"It's a lovesome thing.--And there'll be bigger fruits still in a few
+weeks' time."
+
+"I'm ... not so sure," he said slowly.  "It was mostly my long tramps
+that brought the big inspirations."
+
+He was forcing himself, these days, to speak naturally and casually
+of his tragic disability; but he had not yet been so frank with
+Sheila and she winced in spite of herself.  Too well she remembered
+his boyish delight when he persuaded his father to lengthen the
+studio by throwing two rooms into one, and how he had declared that
+merely from the extra space for prowling there would spring a
+masterpiece.  And he had always worked standing.  In absence she
+instinctively pictured him on his feet.  Even now----
+
+Yet, if he could face things and speak of it all like this, she must
+face them too....
+
+"I believe when ... genius really comes alive again, it will override
+everything," she said in a voice of subdued conviction.  "I'm not
+just prophesying smooth things.  I'm confessing ... the faith that is
+in me."
+
+Mark was silent.  He dared not speak.  He dared hardly look at her,
+lest she read the worship in his eyes.
+
+Lady Forsyth, being in no wise hampered, impulsively held out her
+hands.
+
+"Darling, you and I are of one faith," she said: and Sheila swept to
+her and kneeled beside her, glad to hide her face a moment against
+the shoulder of Mark's mother.
+
+
+After that, she came again and again, and the effect on Mark's temper
+and spirits was obvious to all.  She was not merely a healing
+influence, but a source of inspiration; an incentive to renewed
+effort, to a more purposeful grip on the far from futile activities
+that still remained to him.
+
+Inevitably he found himself contrasting the high felicity of this
+girl's companionship with that other who had led him hopelessly
+astray from the path of true happiness.  On the one hand a spell, a
+desire, a troubled unsatisfying charm: on the other, a real woman's
+heart,--gracious, consoling, understanding, that rang true to every
+testing touch, and would, he felt convinced, could he test her to the
+uttermost.  If, at times, Sheila seemed narrow where Bel was
+diffused, she had the higher merit of being deep where Bel was
+shallow.  While there was scarcely a surface in life or art that Bel
+had not skimmed, she had penetrated nowhere.  Sheila--ignorant of
+much that the modern girl deems essential to her equipment for
+life--was yet profoundly versed in the eternal lore of the heart.
+Bel could never let a man forget he was primarily a man and she
+primarily a woman: whereas, some finer quality in Sheila enabled Mark
+to rest content--almost--with the enchantment of her voice, her eyes
+and the fellowship of her spirit.  For all that, there were moments
+when he wondered how much longer he could keep it up----
+
+And again Sheila, though he did not guess it, was his best safeguard.
+She had come, simply and gladly, without after-thought, convinced
+that she could heal his hurt spirit, though his body was beyond her
+help.
+
+For the moment, it sufficed that she was privileged through her own
+gift of healing, to revive his greater gift of creation: and to that
+end she marshalled all the forces of her still, strong nature.
+Self-dedicated to his service, the unspoken prayer of her spirit was
+the prayer of Theodolind, the mystic: "Give me wings of great desire,
+lest I look within and fail."  And gradually, unconsciously, she
+imparted something of her exalted mood to Mark.  A growing conviction
+that this blessed state of things involved no danger to her, gave him
+fresh courage to control his own emotion lest he lose the best he had
+any right to ask of her now.
+
+So, for awhile, things went well at Wynchcombe Friars: and for Lady
+Forsyth those last two weeks of March were the happiest, the most
+hopeful, she had known since Mark's return from France.
+
+He had reverted, by now, to his old keen interest in the management
+of his property; and began to enjoy driving with Russell through his
+woods and farmlands, and supervising his handicrafts colony, chiefly
+given over to French and Flemish refugees.  Since no son of his would
+ever reign at Wynchcombe Friars, he was the more zealous to do his
+utmost--while time and opportunity were given him--for the people and
+the land he loved.  In this way he grew to be aware that his tenants
+and workers regarded him with a new and peculiar devotion, often
+touchingly exhibited, inexpressive creatures though they were by
+heritage and habit.  He was even persuaded to put in an appearance at
+a big recruiting demonstration at Winchester, where he called upon
+Jevons, the bootmaker, to the old man's huge delight.  He read
+voraciously and played chess with his mother; though in their case,
+it was apt to become a prolonged argument rather than a game.  He
+also started a bust of Keith, who quarrelled with his undiscerning
+choice of a subject and in secret was mightily pleased at the
+compliment.
+
+Mark did not fail to note his mother's eager interest in this new
+venture: or the pains she was at not to let it be suspected.  It set
+him wondering what on earth the dear good fellow was up to--he that
+was free to go in and win the woman of his heart.
+
+
+March departed lamblike; and April came in with primroses and violets
+and dappled skies; with coral buds on the wild almond at the end of
+the terrace, and the gleam of young leaves on black boughs.
+
+April was Mark's own month and for him there was none like it in all
+the year.  He too felt the leap of new life and hope within him: and
+Sheila began to talk of getting leave for her promised visit.
+
+But, before her dream came true, that stir of new life, within and
+without, precipitated a crisis--almost inevitable between unavowed
+lovers, using the language of friendship and thinking the thoughts of
+love.  It came precisely when and precisely because increasing
+confidence and intimacy had thrown them a little off their guard.
+
+Upon the afternoon of Sheila's seventh visit they were left
+practically alone.  Keith had driven Lady Forsyth over to Bramleigh
+Beeches to meet a distinguished Indian poetess, who had expressed
+admiration of Helen's small volume of French and Belgian War poems.
+These she had translated during the winter to keep her mind from
+brooding on Mark and to raise extra money for their refugees.  Helen
+was eager to meet the little lady who had written so charmingly about
+her work; and they left early that Keith might be back in time to
+drive Sheila home.
+
+Mark's elation should have warned him that there was peculiar need
+for caution and control.  But the wine of spring sparkled in his
+veins.  The air was full of love-songs and Te Deums.  Daffodil buds
+were breaking and the first butterflies were out.  All the morning he
+had been scouring the country with Keith in the little car that was
+now the joy of his life: and an afternoon alone with Sheila fittingly
+crowned his content.
+
+When massage was over, he voted for tea at the south-west corner of
+the terrace where they would secure the last of the sun.
+
+"A Japanese tea-party," said Sheila, "to worship the almond blossom!"
+
+Mark privately added another object of worship, no less emblematic of
+spring.  For Sheila, happy in her devotion and in her power of
+healing, was emerging from the shadow of her double loss; shyly
+watching, at last, the dawning of her secret hope.  Her eyes and skin
+were clearer, her cheeks less pale, her beauty and her spirit seemed
+visibly to blossom with the blossoming year.  Her delight in the day
+and the occasion was no less than Mark's, but it was of a stiller
+quality.
+
+They carried him down to the terrace, chair and all; and there,
+established in the sunny corner, watched over by the almond tree, she
+made tea for him and told stories of her other patients, whom she was
+neglecting a little these days.
+
+More by instinct than design, they kept their talk in a lighter vein
+than usual; and Bobs, as gay as either of them, proved very
+serviceable in this respect.
+
+Suddenly there flashed on Mark a memory of that other picnic on the
+shore of Loch Etive: the love-making, the conscious coquetry; the
+first intimation of underlying rocks that would have wrecked their
+ship of marriage.  Summarily he dismissed the intrusive reminder,
+that made him angry with himself, angrier still with Bel and her
+shallow witchery.  Yet the indelible shadow of what had been lay
+right across his path.  Painfully he was learning that "the whole
+life is mixed; the mocking Past will stay."
+
+But this afternoon he would have none of it----
+
+Hester had come out to remove the tea-things and she brought a letter
+for Mark from Colonel Munro.  When he looked up from reading it,
+Sheila sat lost in thought, one elbow on the empty tea-table, looking
+away across the valley, where a gap in the pine woods revealed a
+glimpse of blue distance clear against the evening sky.
+
+For a space he watched her, till he dared watch no longer.  Then:
+"Mouse," he said very quietly, "what are you brooding on so deeply?"
+
+And she answered him, as quietly, in one word.  "Ralph."
+
+Her tone in speaking of that very ordinary, very brave and beloved
+brother gave Mark always a sense of standing on sacred ground.  He
+said nothing; and after a pause she sighed and sat upright in her low
+straightbacked chair resting her arms on the table, her hands loosely
+clasped.
+
+On the middle finger of her left hand she wore a curious, antique
+ring; a Christmas present from her absentee father.
+
+"A day like this is double-edged, isn't it?  It seems to stir all the
+deeps--joy and pain.  He was such a dear simple thing.  So close to
+earth, loving it all so.  And yet--the other was what he wished.
+Just when you spoke I was thinking of that wonderful Roumanian
+ballad, the dead soldier who was content: the last lines--you know,
+when he asks the passers-by are they remembering him?
+
+  '"Not so, my hero," the lovers said,
+  "We are those who remember not.
+  For the Spring has come and the Earth has smiled
+  And the dead must be forgot."
+  And the soldier spake from the deep dark grave--
+            "I am content!"'"
+
+
+At the last, her voice shook so that there was a moment of silence
+before she added: "I believe that's what most of them would say--our
+'noble army of martyrs'--if only we could hear----"
+
+"Yes: most of them," Mark answered slowly, with quiet conviction.
+"And on the whole, I'm not sure ... they haven't the best of it."
+
+She turned quickly and met his direct gaze.  "You mustn't say that."
+
+"I don't--to the others.  But I feel it--pretty acutely ...
+sometimes."
+
+"Not so often--now."
+
+It was a statement rather than a question.
+
+"Not nearly so often.  That's your doing."
+
+Her deep blush so startled him that he promptly took refuge in
+generalities:--the effect of the war on character, national and
+individual: which tendency would prevail on the whole, the spiritual
+exaltation of a high purpose and tragedy nobly borne; or
+demoralisation from sheer horror and strain?  Maurice Lenox, for
+instance, how would he and his type eventually emerge from the war?
+And even where there had been a genuine uplift, would it last?  Or,
+would the pendulum swing back farther than ever, if the struggle
+dragged endlessly, sullenly on?
+
+Sheila admitted reluctantly that the pendulum had to be reckoned
+with.  She was thinking of Seldon and of Bel: and some hidden channel
+of communion conveyed her thought to Mark.  He had heard of Seldon
+from Ralph at Inveraig and again, lately, from his mother.  But he
+had no idea how far things had ever gone between them and he very
+much wanted to know.  He had no business whatever to be jealous of
+the man; but he was fiercely jealous, none the less.
+
+"How about that particular friend of yours, Seldon?" he asked
+casually.  "Mums told me you had him here.  Quite regenerate.  All
+your achievement--what d'you think?  Will it last?"'
+
+She started and looked up.  "How odd you should speak of him.  He was
+in my mind."
+
+"_Why_ was he in your mind?"
+
+Jealousy flashed out in spite of him: and she smiled.
+
+"Isn't he allowed to be?"
+
+"I'm not sure.  Depends how he's going to behave himself!"  The
+chaffing tone was deliberately assumed.  "As a patient----"
+
+"Oh, he's not my patient any more," she put in quickly.  "But I'm
+bothered about him all the same."
+
+"Why?  _Isn't_ it going to last?"
+
+"He'll go out again.  At least, I believe he will," she answered
+evasively.  "Motor transport, he says.  He can't do despatch riding
+any more."
+
+"Still writes to you, does he?"
+
+"Not very often--now."  She paused; longing to tell him everything;
+yet doubtful, still, whether any shred of feeling remained for Bel.
+
+"And ... he doesn't want to marry you?" Mark asked irrelevantly.  He
+simply had to know.
+
+"He did.  That was the beginning of it."
+
+"Of what?--The drink?  Because you wouldn't have him?"
+
+"Mark--that's an insult!"  But it was useless pretending to be angry.
+The discovery that he could be jealous, even half in joke, sent her
+spirits up with a run.  "Someone else was responsible for that, thank
+goodness.  And unluckily, he's come across her again.  I'm not at all
+happy about it; and I don't think he is either."
+
+"Wrong sort, is she?"
+
+"M-yes.  I don't believe she wants him.  Yet--she's holding him in
+spite of himself."
+
+"Poor devil!"  Mark was quite ready now to extend the hand of
+sympathy.  "_I_ know--all about that."  He spoke slowly and with
+emphasis.  He had decided, on the spur of the moment, to break
+through his misleading silence about Bel; to explain frankly the
+process and the completeness of his disenchantment.  She must know.
+She had the right to know: she, whom he had so cavalierly deserted,
+after their names had been coupled by relatives and friends.  Though
+power to make reparation was denied him, he felt imperatively that
+she must know.
+
+So, after a pause, he went on, with the same slow emphasis: "You
+see--perhaps you did see--Miss Alison was that sort."
+
+The formal name, so casually spoken, sounded very strange on his
+lips; and her heart, that was now in a troublesome state of
+commotion, rejoiced to hear it.  "Yes: I did see--afterwards," she
+said in her quietest voice.  "Not at first."
+
+"Nor did I--at first.  In fact, not clearly, till I got out to
+France.  Machine-guns and high explosives play havoc with more than
+the landscape and the human envelope.  They smash up unrealities and
+readjust all the values.  Oh yes, out there one saw things
+clear--horrid clear.  Her letters too..." he paused.  "And all those
+weeks, when ... I was dead, when I seemed to have no real link with
+anything, any one but that devoted little nun.  Her saintliness, her
+simplicity ... made things clearer than ever.  I saw--" he paused,
+looking down into the heart of the wood; tempted beyond measure to
+defy Fate and iron decrees and tell her all he had seen in those
+strange days, when his lips were closed and his eyes were dazzlingly
+opened to the truth.  The one thing he did not see at that moment,
+fortunately perhaps, was Sheila's face, bright with the dawn of
+realisation, of an almost incredible hope.  "I saw," he repeated in a
+low, impersonal tone, as if talking to himself, "how rootless our
+whole relation was and always had been.  She never reached the
+depths.  Didn't want to.  She had no earthly use for them.  Her
+effect on me was an artificial stimulus all along.  Mind, I'm not
+excusing myself.  It's no credit to me that she could and did take
+such a hold.  And I came very near marrying her before I went out.
+Makes me shiver now to think of it: for her sake as much as my own.
+Dangerous things, these war marriages.  I've heard of some painful
+cases.--Then, when I came back, there she was--irresistible as ever.
+But the something in me that couldn't resist her had been burnt
+away--out there.  Then they told me I was a permanent crock....  No
+choice--after that.  Marrying days were over."  A pause.  "Perhaps,
+after all, it's worth being smashed up, like this, to save one's soul
+alive.  There--now you know.  I've been wanting to tell you ... all
+that this long while."
+
+"And I've been badly ... wanting to know," she admitted very softly;
+but his quick ear caught a new vibration in her voice.  Startled out
+of his passing relief, he turned swiftly and was confronted by a
+transfigured Sheila, gifts in her eyes, the colour rising in her
+cheeks.  For her there was no iron decree.  Heart and soul she was
+ready.  And Mark, for one measureless moment, sat there tongue-tied,
+realising what he had done, realising still more acutely what he
+dared not do....  With a supreme effort he forced himself to look
+away from her.
+
+"I was _right_ when I said ... just now ... the dead have the best of
+it," he muttered in a tone of concentrated bitterness.
+
+Sheila sat silent, motionless.  It was as if with one hand he had
+lifted her to heaven and with the other had flung her back into the
+dust--Her eyes were blinded so that she could not see the pain in his
+face: and suddenly her ears caught the purr of the motor coming down
+the drive.
+
+"Ah--there they are!"  It was Mark who spoke.
+
+Sheila heard the note of relief in his voice and it cut her to the
+heart.
+
+Without a word she rose and went to meet them----
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+  "A seed of fire is in the human soul
+  That tears can quench not...."
+                                  F. W. B.
+
+
+Helen, herself, had seen at a glance that something was wrong: very
+wrong indeed.  When the two were gone, she returned to Mark with a
+flutter of trepidation at her heart.
+
+Sheila cared.  By this time she was convinced of it.  And Mark?  Once
+already, in his blindness, he had flung aside this jewel of a girl.
+Did he mean to do it a second time open-eyed, because his body had
+suffered shipwreck in the service of his country?  If he had got that
+resolve in his brain, she foreknew the futility of argument.
+Yet--given the chance and the facts--she was prepared to fight it out
+with him, for Sheila's sake no less than his own.
+
+But it was for him to speak first; and she feared his silence.
+
+During her absence he had wheeled himself along the terrace and back
+again to that fatal corner, where a ghostly Sheila still sat in the
+empty chair, her arms resting on the table, a light of unearthly
+beauty in her eyes.  His face wore the hard closed-up look that his
+mother had not seen for weeks.  Casual talk about Bramleigh Beeches
+was sheerly impossible.
+
+"My darling, what _has_ gone wrong?" she made bold to ask.
+
+He frowned and set his teeth.  "Everything.  Too perfect to last.  I
+might have known it."  He looked about him uneasily.  "We can't talk
+out here.  Let's get indoors."
+
+They proceeded to get indoors accordingly; and there by the freshly
+crackling drawing-room fire it was possible to talk.  Mark lit a
+cigarette to steady himself.  Lady Forsyth sat in her favourite small
+chair, warming her hands, that always went cold under stress of
+emotion.
+
+"Mark, did you speak to her?" she asked quietly.
+
+"I came within an ace of it--God forgive me!"
+
+Those three words confirmed her worst fears.  But she could say
+nothing yet.  Her heart was beating fast.  It was a distressing
+symptom, greatly increased by months of anxiety and the ceaseless
+strain of the war.
+
+So she remained silent, awaiting further revelations.  And after a
+pause Mark went on:--"I deserve a thorough good kicking.  Wish I'd a
+father to give it me.  Perhaps Keith will.  I'm not blaming you,
+Mums.  This massage business has done me no end of good.  But in
+every other respect it's been the very devil.  As for _her_--she's
+the most perfect thing God ever made.  And I'm afraid ... I'm
+horribly afraid ... she cares.  The look in her eyes dumbfounded me.
+There was no choice between a clean cut ... and surrender...."
+
+"And why _not_ surrender?" his mother ventured, fearful yet
+undaunted.  "Honestly I believe--it would be better and happier for
+us all."
+
+At that the stifled flame in him leaped out even as she had feared.
+
+"Better for _me_ ... for you.  That's the extent of your honest
+belief.  Mums, you're not facing this business straight: though you
+think you are.  You're just a dear devoted mother-woman.  Whatever
+your son cries for, from a Noah's ark to a wife, you'll move heaven
+and earth to get it for him at any cost--to any one.  And I love you
+for it.  But you can't expect me, always, to see it the same way.
+I'm considering Sheila and no one but Sheila----"
+
+"My dear boy, _I'm_ considering her too!" his mother cried out,
+unable to endure that last reproach.  "I've been doing so a good deal
+longer than you have; and, believe it or not, my understanding of her
+goes deeper than yours.  I'm a woman.  She's a woman----"
+
+"_There_ you are!"  Mark fairly took the word out of her mouth.
+"It's because she's so divinely a woman that I refuse to let her in
+for ... a travesty of a marriage.  A girl like that was created for
+better things than dancing attendance on a broken man.  It would be a
+sin.  You know that as well as I do."
+
+She was silent a moment, recognising that he spoke the truth: one
+side of it.  But even while she loved and honoured him for his
+refusal, conviction remained that Sheila, if she really cared, would
+recognise no obstacles.
+
+"But, dear, after all, things aren't quite past mending," she urged
+in a quieter tone.  "Surely Sheila has the right to know you love
+her, and to make her own choice."
+
+Mark shook his head.  "She wouldn't think things out.  And she'd be
+too tender-hearted to refuse.--As for me, there probably will be
+improvement, of sorts.  But, so far as I can see, the chances are
+I'll never be a whole man again: and I don't see myself marrying
+Sheila, on the off chance----"
+
+"Oh--you're hopeless!  And _she's_ helpless, poor darling!  Why must
+we wretched women always be dumb on this matter that concerns us
+above everything else?  She ought to be allowed to take the
+initiative in a case like this."
+
+"Just as well for me that she isn't," Mark muttered grimly.  But she
+detected in his voice the mere ghost of a vibration, and a wild hope
+leaped in her heart.  Sheila might move him, or Keith----
+
+At this point Mark leaned forward suddenly and flung away his
+cigarette.
+
+"Don't let's talk of this again, Mums," he said, more gently than he
+had spoken yet.  "It hurts us both too much.  Also it's futile.
+Nothing on earth would induce me to offer Sheila--damaged goods:
+damaged in every sense.  I'm the sinner first and last.  When I ought
+to have been at her feet, I was wasting my substance on ... Miss
+Alison.  Oh yes ... you knew ... you're welcome to your private
+triumph.'
+
+"My son--it's no triumph," she broke out bitterly.  "It's torment.  I
+would sooner have been entirely wrong and that Bel should have turned
+out worthy of your chivalrous love----"
+
+"Well, _I_ wouldn't," he contradicted her inevitably.  "I wouldn't
+sooner anything that might have robbed me of discovering Sheila as
+I've been discovering her these few weeks; even though it's made
+things in general ten times harder to bear.  She's a perpetual
+inspiration.  A light of earth.  If she were only that--!  But she's
+more.  And so ... she's not for me.  Possibly I was mistaken this
+afternoon.  It might have been ... just her heavenly sympathy.  I
+hope to God it was!  We'll run no more risks, anyway.  If she gets
+this leave of hers, I'd better go off on some sort of tour with
+Keith:--doctor's orders!  If he's too busy, the Sinclairs might put
+up with me for a bit, or Uncle John down at Weymouth.  The farther
+the better.  We must furbish up some sort of presentable excuse.
+It's pretty detestable, just when things in general seemed to be
+taking a real lift all round."
+
+And his mother sat listening to it all, mute and miserable,
+envisaging the spring and summer--that had seemed to promise
+resurrection--darkened by this fresh tragedy.  She knew, now, just
+how high hope had risen of late.
+
+"And is this sort of thing ... to be permanent?" she asked, with a
+sigh of utter weariness.
+
+He turned and regarded her reproachfully, the faintest flicker of
+humour in his grave eyes. "My dear Mums, I sometimes wonder if you
+really have walked this earth for fifty years!  Is anything ever
+permanent--except change?  I suppose ... we shall both shake down in
+time and accept the horrid fact.  But at present, as things stand,
+the less she sees of me the better.  She ought--to marry.  And she
+probably will.  Oh _God_!"
+
+The last words were no more than a fierce whisper, and his hand
+closed sharply on the arm of his chair.
+
+His mother neither moved nor spoke.  She leaned forward over the
+fire, her face half turned away from him, thankful the lights were
+not switched on.
+
+But although no sob escaped her, Mark knew very well that she was
+crying.  In other circumstances he would have been on his knees
+beside her.  As it was, he sat there dumb; chained to the accursed
+chair, raging at his helplessness; raging still more at his very
+belated readiness to fulfil her heart's desire.
+
+Soon she rose hurriedly, murmured something about coming back soon,
+and left him....
+
+
+They were alone that evening.  Keith was dining at Wynchmere and
+speaking afterwards at the Working Man's Club on ambulance driving in
+France.  They missed him badly, both of them.  It is often the way
+with such quiet, unobtrusive natures.  Keith and Sheila were alike in
+that respect: and all through dinner, both were vividly present to
+the minds of mother and son.  But their talk in the main was of
+Bramleigh Beeches, Indian genius, and the poetry of Tagore.
+
+After dinner Mark asked for _Sadhāna_ and music.  He wanted
+to escape from talk that could not, just then, be anything but a mere
+makeshift between them: a state of things unnatural and intolerable
+to both.  While his mother played Grieg and Beethoven, he opened his
+book haphazard at the poet's exquisite clear-eyed discourse on
+"Realisation in Love."
+
+"Our individual soul," he read, "has been separated from the Supreme
+Soul not from alienation, but from fulness of love.  It is for this
+reason that untruths, sufferings, and evil are not at a standstill:
+the human soul can defy them, can overcome them; nay, can altogether
+transform them into new power and beauty...."
+
+Mark pondered that sentence a long while.  It was like a light
+flashed upon the dark path before him; like the voice of God in his
+own soul, saying, "This do and thou shalt live."  His faith in the
+Unseen was, like that of most Britons, an inarticulate and very
+hidden thing.  But his brief, strenuous spell of service, followed by
+weeks of intimate, yet unspoken communion with the passionate soul of
+one small French nun, had intensified his inner vision and deepened
+the measure of faith that was in him.  To-night he recognised and
+accepted the task assigned him; recognised also that, just in so far
+as he fulfilled it, he would be still able to serve his country and
+his own people, in defiance of his handicap.  The struggle between
+spirit and matter, that had hitherto been the keynote of his art,
+must now become the keynote of his life....  "Unconquering, yet
+unconquered...."  Stevenson knew.
+
+Yet still his desolate, rebellious heart cried out that _with Sheila_
+any achievement were possible: without her the future loomed dark and
+formless, a night devoid of stars....
+
+Punctually at ten he asked to be taken up to bed.  When he was gone,
+the house felt so silent and empty that Helen fled for refuge to her
+own room and her own fire.  Anxious and disheartened by this fresh
+trouble, she clung to the thought of Keith as a shipwrecked man to a
+spar.  Her own pleading was vitiated--no denying it--by the mere fact
+of her motherhood.  Keith could speak more impartially, more frankly,
+as one man to another.  She wanted to see him, and unburden her heart
+to him before she slept.  But he expected to be late and had begged
+her not to sit up.  Besides, he would be tired and it would not be
+fair on him.  She must have patience till the morning.  Her rebel
+spirit was being drilled into patience these days.
+
+The door into Mark's room was shut.  It most often had to be, now.
+But she heard no sound of footsteps.  The men had evidently left him.
+Should she go in and say good night?  Her heart yearned over him; and
+it was hateful to feel unsure of her welcome.  Did he guess how
+acutely she missed his casual wanderings in and out; the arguments,
+the "ragging," and the dear delights of their ancient comradeship,
+that almost seemed to belong to another life?
+
+Latterly, under Sheila's reviving influence, the old happy relation
+had been renewed with a difference.  It was she who now went in to
+him for early tea, when he did not peremptorily order her back lest
+she catch cold; and the "hair-brush interview" often took place
+beside his bed.  Being dependent on the men, he could not sit up till
+all hours.  Now, to-day--just as hope was sending green shoots into
+the sunshine--she felt jerked back into the miseries and
+uncertainties of a winter that she would fain wipe clean out of her
+memory.
+
+Finally, she decided to go in to him and chance the result.
+
+The comfort of finding she was welcome would be worth the risk.
+
+His room was in darkness: curtains drawn back, windows flung open,
+revealing a strip of starry sky and black pine branches blotting out
+a constellation or two.  The light from her own room guided her to
+his bed.
+
+He said not a word.  But his arms came out to greet her; and he drew
+her down, clinging to her, as he had never done in the days before
+War had crippled his strong, shapely body and shaken his nerves.
+
+"I thought--you had forgotten," he said at last.
+
+"And _I_ thought perhaps--you would rather not."
+
+He tightened his hold.  "I forbid you to think that, ever.  No matter
+what the devil inside me may say or do.  A nice sort of curse I am to
+you, little Mums."
+
+"You're the dearest blessing of my life," she answered, her cheek
+against his.
+
+It was some time before he let her go: but neither of them spoke the
+word uppermost in their minds.
+
+She left him at last, with his fervent "God bless you" in her ears
+and hope renewed in her heart.  Sheila--if she loved him
+sufficiently--must win in the end.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+"Yea, there shall be a time that shall lay hold on a man unaware and
+shall give him one thing beyond his hope."--PINDAR.
+
+
+She woke late, after a restless night, to find letters already on her
+tray and the housemaid at her washing-stand.
+
+In her room, as in Mark's, there was never any need for drawing back
+curtains or opening windows to let in the morning.  Winter and summer
+she performed both offices herself before going to sleep.  For her,
+boxed-up bedrooms, stuffily curtained, were anathema.  Nature's night
+was a thing of brooding beauty; and the stars were her friends.  If
+she woke in the small hours, a frequent event, she liked to find them
+looking in on her, to see them glimmering like Christmas candles
+through the blackness of her sentinel pines.
+
+Now the birds were making music in their branches, and the stars had
+long since been blown out by the sun.
+
+"Has Sir Mark had his tea?" she asked, as the maid went out.
+
+"No, my lady: he's still asleep."
+
+"Tell Macgregor not to disturb him."
+
+That meant--a bad night: for he was an early waker.  And, for all her
+devotion, she could do practically nothing to ease his misery.  It is
+one of the hardest though perhaps not the least salutary laws of life.
+
+She lit her spirit lamp and took up her letters.  One of them was
+from Mrs. Melrose: an unusual event.  In spite of the link between
+their children, and the natural inference that some day Sheila would
+marry Mark, these two were not friends.  They were merely life-long
+acquaintances.  But Mrs. Melrose, like many of her kind, could slip
+on the cloak of friendship when it happened to serve her purpose.
+And it served her purpose now.
+
+
+"My dear Lady Forsyth," she wrote--"I've been feeling rather
+concerned lately about our Sheila and her future prospects.  I say
+'our,' because, by her own choice, she seems to belong almost as much
+to you as to her father and me.  But--after all--she is mine.  I am
+responsible for her welfare.  And as we are such very old friends, I
+am going to write to you quite frankly on the subject of her possible
+marriage.  Of course I know how you discourage gossip in every shape
+and form, but you are, no doubt, aware that for a long time Sheila's
+name was coupled with Mark's all over the neighbourhood.  Quite
+natural--you must admit.  And if Mark had not suddenly gone off at a
+tangent in another direction, I wouldn't have given the matter a
+thought.  I am far too busy to worry over trifles."
+
+
+("Too busy to win your daughter's confidence or her heart!" was
+Helen's mental interjection.)
+
+
+"But even in these casual days, it does not improve a girl's chances
+if her name is bandied about, coupled with this man and that.  Last
+autumn there was that Mr. Seldon.  Now I hear _he_ is running after
+Miss Alison.  She seems a dangerous young woman.
+
+"But what chiefly worries me is this.  I discovered the other day
+that people round here are again speculating about Sheila and Mark.
+And I am sure, dear Lady Forsyth, you will agree with me that this
+won't do at all.  Mind, I am not saying a word against Mark.  But I
+do think that, for Sheila's sake, he should be careful not to set
+people talking again in that way, as he would not, I feel sure, think
+of asking her to marry him, now.  To be quite frank, neither her
+father nor I would wish it.  And I feel sure you would not wish it
+either----"
+
+
+At this point Helen flushed furiously.  Those velvety phrases barely
+concealed the direct hit at herself: but the next few sentences so
+startled her that she almost forgot to be angry.
+
+
+"Personally, in strict confidence, I am convinced that Mr. Macnair is
+seriously _épris_ with our little girl.  Surely you must have noticed
+it yourself?  And nothing would delight me more.  He is clever,
+charming, eligible in every way.  I thought of it first when he began
+teaching her to drive.  And it has been very marked since his return
+from France.  I have said nothing yet, to Sheila herself.  She is
+difficult about such things; so shut in.  Her Melrose grandmother all
+over.  And Mr. Macnair is so modest.  The sort of man who needs a
+certain amount of _discreet_ encouragement.  But darling Sheila is
+rather a little fool in that way.  I've told her more than once her
+pride will be her ruin!  Now she talks about spending her leave at
+Wynchcombe Friars.  This would be _such_ a good chance to complete
+matters and put an end to all this gossip, that I hope I am not
+presuming on our friendship, if I ask you to give them both a
+_little_ push in the right direction--quite unobtrusively, as only an
+older woman can.  It's all they need, dear foolish creatures, and I
+may add you would earn my eternal gratitude.  Forgive me if I have
+written too frankly.  But being a mother yourself, I am _sure_ you
+will understand.  So glad to hear from Sheila that Mark is really
+better in every way.
+
+  "Yours most sincerely,
+              "ADELA MELROSE.
+
+
+It is hardly too much to say that before Helen Forsyth reached the
+end of that amazing burst of confidence, she had a sudden dizzying
+sensation of seeing the world, her familiar home-world, the wrong
+side up.  Keith and Sheila--whom she had always regarded as belonging
+respectively to herself and Mark!  And she--with her tragic knowledge
+of her son's belated awakening--was to give those two the "little
+push" that would send them into each other's arms!
+
+Once or twice, at Boulogne, she remembered, this very idea had dimly
+occurred to her.  But now--coming from Mrs. Melrose of all
+people--she found it intolerable.  She resented it vehemently; and
+not on Mark's account alone.  Yet the disconcerting fact remained
+that Keith might hold other views on the subject.  She had always
+been sceptical over Mark's nonsense about herself.  At least--until
+this bewildering moment--she had honestly believed in her own
+scepticism.  She had put the idea away from her and thanked God for
+the treasure of Keith's devoted friendship.  But this morning she
+perceived, for the first time, that she was not at all prepared for
+his falling in love elsewhere.
+
+Was she fundamentally given to self-deception, without knowing
+it--she who set such store by sincerity of soul?  Only last night
+Mark had turned another of her "honest beliefs" inside out.  What
+would he say to this?
+
+And Sheila herself?  Incredible!
+
+Distracted by conflicting emotions and utterly perplexed, she leaned
+back among her pillows.  There could be no peace, on her own account
+or Mark's, till she had got at the truth.  But--a gleam of humour
+flashed through her dismay--how was it to be done?  Wire to Sheila:
+"Are you in love with Keith?"?  Ask Keith over his coffee and
+newspaper: "Are you in love with Sheila?"?  Confront each with the
+other on Wednesday, and say point-blank: "Look here, if you two want
+to marry, Mark and I have no objections to make"?
+
+Perhaps they were hesitating on that score.  It would be just like
+them.  And as to Keith, there was no denying that Mrs. Melrose had a
+case.  He had never disguised his admiration for Sheila.  Words and
+incidents, unnoticed at the time, came crowding back to her memory----
+
+It was mainly to Sheila that Helen looked for reprieve, especially
+after last night.  Yet, if she went to Mark now, with this Melrose
+fantasy, he would simply say: "What did I tell you?  The real mother
+has a natural eye to Sheila's real interests.  If there's a ghost of
+a chance for Keith, let the whole man win her if he can."
+
+Yes.  Mark would say that: and he would be right.
+
+Of a sudden, she felt heartily ashamed of herself.  What was it she
+had said to Sheila at Inveraig?--"Be as kind as you please to your
+poor things so long as you stop short of marrying them."  Yet when it
+came to her own son, she was ready to eat her counsel without
+compunction.  But then--Mark was Mark.  And if Sheila loved him--if
+she preferred mothering her one disabled hero----?
+
+If--if!  She was simply back again at her argument of last night.
+Till she knew the facts, speculation was futile.  And until she did
+know, she would certainly say nothing to Mark.  Keith, as usual, was
+her city of refuge.  After breakfast she would get him away alone and
+tell him everything.  If necessary, she would even show him that
+detestable letter.....
+
+
+At breakfast in the study they talked war news and Government delays
+and the Great Offensive, that appeared to have been slain either by
+bad Staff work, or by lack of ammunition and shells.  And while they
+talked, Helen was surreptitiously watching Keith's lean, thoughtful
+face, with awakened eyes; listening to the even quiet of his voice
+with new ears.  And all the time she was telling herself sternly that
+perhaps this very Keith, her own peculiar property, was in love with
+Sheila.
+
+When at last he went down to the library, she followed him at a
+casual distance.  He had just grasped the door-handle when she
+reached the last of the stairs.
+
+"Keith," she called; and he turned quickly.  "I've had a letter that
+puzzles me rather.  Can you spare me a few minutes?"
+
+"The whole morning if you like."
+
+There was no fervour in his tone.  He simply stated an obvious fact.
+
+"Well, come out on the terrace and bask in this lovely day.  When the
+sun is kind enough to take notice of England we ought to give him
+every encouragement!"
+
+She talked on rather rapidly for the sake of saying something and
+keeping nervousness at bay.  She had a deep respect for the reserves
+of her men-folk: and now, too late, she shrank from laying a finger
+on the curtain that hid the real Keith from her.  Outside on the
+terrace she fell silent till they reached the far corner, where Mark
+and Sheila had parted so abruptly the day before.
+
+"Well--what about your letter?" he asked, an amused note in his
+voice.  It was so like Helen to ask for an urgent few minutes and
+then talk about April sunshine.  It was the sort of thing that made
+her at once so aggravating and so lovable.
+
+No escape now; and she plunged headlong.
+
+"It's from Mrs. Melrose.  She has an idea ...  she says ... you and
+Sheila...."  Quite useless.  She could get no further.  "I think,"
+she added, handing him that innocuous-looking bombshell, "you'd
+better read it for yourself."
+
+Mystified by her manner and mildly curious, he obeyed: and she,
+feeling uncomfortably shaky, half sat on the edge of the stone
+balustrade, watching his face for some sign of confirmation or
+reprieve.  She saw his eyebrows go up, then draw together in a sharp
+frown.  Then there leaped a flame in his grey eyes such as she had
+seen once or twice at Boulogne when he came into collision with
+immobile Authority.  Finally she saw a dull flush creep into his
+face:--anger or emotion?  It was hard to tell.  The curtain was not
+lifted--yet.
+
+Quite suddenly, he looked up and caught her eyes on him.
+
+"Has the woman taken leave of her senses?" he asked, in a dazed
+voice.  "Sheer insolence--all that twaddle about Mark.  As for the
+rest--"  He paused, and his flush deepened.  "Sheila and I are quite
+capable of managing our own affairs without her inspired assistance."
+
+"Precisely what I thought," Helen murmured.  That "Sheila and I"
+produced a horrid sinking at her heart.
+
+"_You_?  What have you been thinking?"
+
+"A good deal ... since I read that letter."  And the pang she had no
+business to feel gave her courage to go on: "Keith, if it's true ...
+what Mrs. Melrose says, I want to say ... on my own account, that you
+need have no hesitation in this matter, because of Mark.  He ... he
+only spoke of it yesterday.  He feels ... he has no right.  I confess
+I had hoped--but ... we both care so immensely for you two...."
+
+"That you are graciously willing to fling us at each other's heads,"
+Keith broke out angrily, "at the instigation of this impertinent
+woman.  Upon my word, Helen, I stand confounded----!"
+
+She also stood confounded.  Anger from Keith was more than she had
+bargained for: and she was further inconvenienced by an ignominious
+impulse to weep.
+
+This gave Keith a distinct advantage: and he went on speaking with
+the same phenomenal vehemence.  "I gave you credit for a better
+understanding of us both.  Sheila and I, let me tell you, know our
+own minds very thoroughly, and have done so for years.  You say Mark
+spoke of this yesterday?  I'll warrant _he_ never coupled Sheila's
+name with mine."
+
+"No.  He was speaking of himself.  He feels ... it isn't fair on
+her...."
+
+"A good deal fairer, in my opinion, than sending her home crumpled up
+as she was last night.  Something happened, while we were out, that
+broke her all to pieces.  Obviously, from the way you are both
+behaving, neither of you have a glimmering notion of what that girl
+feels for Mark.  It's my belief that, through long repression, her
+love has reached a height of almost sacrificial devotion; and that's
+not the sort of thing a man can afford to fling aside for a
+scruple--even an honourable scruple."
+
+"Would you say the same," she ventured--secretly overjoyed that he
+shared her opinion--"if you ... were in Mark's position?"
+
+Keith smiled.  His anger had spent itself.
+
+"Most likely I should be as cruelly considerate as he is being now.
+But standing outside, I can get a clearer view of things.  Helen, if
+he persists in holding back, it's she that will suffer most: and I
+wouldn't mind telling him so in very plain English.  But it would be
+infinitely better, for her own chances, if Sheila could be induced to
+speak for herself."
+
+"Keith!  By whom?"
+
+"By me."
+
+"Would you do it--really?"
+
+"I would, if only to refute that woman's fairy tale...."
+
+"But--when?"
+
+"To-day, if possible."
+
+Helen's eyebrows were eloquent.  It was not the first time, since war
+awakened him, that she had been taken aback by his quiet swiftness of
+thought and decision.
+
+Before she had recovered from her surprise, he was speaking again.
+"So much for Mark and Sheila--good luck to them!  As for yourself--"
+He paused, gazing at her steadfastly.  "You ... blessed woman, has
+the truth never once dawned on you ... in all these years...?"
+
+It was visibly dawning on her now, half blinding her with its
+brightness.  She had thought to lift a corner of the curtain, and
+here he was flinging back the whole of it that she might see and know
+the depth of her misunderstanding.  Confronted thus by the real,
+hidden Keith, she found it amazingly difficult to say even a word in
+reply.
+
+"Mark did write something once," she admitted lamely, "in his last
+letter from the trenches."
+
+He could smile now at the tragic memory.
+
+"That accounts for the missing sheet?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you didn't believe him?"
+
+"No.  Somehow it seemed ... preposterous."
+
+"_Why_ preposterous?"
+
+His laconic bluntness told her how deeply he was moved.
+
+"Keith, I'm eight years older than you.  And ... I felt as if it
+ought to be Sheila.  And--"  A still longer pause.  Her heart was
+beating in jerks.  "I wasn't altogether sure ... of myself.  Then
+when you came back, you gave no sign----"
+
+"'He either fears his fate too much, or his deserts are small,'"
+Keith quoted, still watching her sunlit face.  "A little of both--in
+this case.  My dear ... it's more than fifteen years now that I've
+loved you.  I've never given a thought to any other woman.  And I've
+never entertained a shred of hope----"
+
+She tried to speak.  It was useless: but the quiver of her lips
+emboldened him.
+
+"Helen--was I wrong?"
+
+"Partly wrong."
+
+"Does that mean ... would you--could you marry me?"
+
+"I think it's rather ... could _you_," she said very low; and if her
+words were faintly discouraging, he had the tender assurance of her
+eyes.  "I must be frank with you, Keith.  What I have to give--though
+I give it with all my heart--is not the same thing ... quite.  I
+can't be--you understand?"
+
+"Of course I understand....'
+
+"But that's only half," she interposed, smiling.  "And I had to say
+it.  The other half is ... I love you dearly.  I need you ... at
+every turn.  We seem to belong in a very special way to each other.
+And this morning I wanted to murder Mrs. Melrose.  If that's
+confession enough...?"
+
+"_If_?" he echoed: and she had never heard his expressive voice
+condense so much feeling into a single word.
+
+She had risen in speaking, and now she stood before him in the clear
+sunlight, that made her eyes look bluer than ever, and discovered
+gleams of silver in her red-brown hair.  But Keith had no concern for
+these, or for the lines pencilled by sorrow and strain.  He looked
+beyond them to the springs of eternal youth within her.  Frankly, and
+in a manner delightfully her own, she had confessed her need of him;
+yet he made no move towards her.  They simply stood there, a foot of
+space between them, their spirits linked in closest
+communion--satisfied.
+
+Even had they been indoors it is doubtful whether Keith would have
+done otherwise.  The truth penetrated slowly; and for him that moment
+had a sacredness, an exaltation----
+
+A touch, a word, would have brought them down to earth.
+
+Yet it was he who first became aware of the "scarlet spider" skimming
+down the drive.  "Sheila," he said quietly.  "I'm certain of it."
+
+And he was right.  The telegram was addressed to Helen, and it ran:
+"Cannot come Wednesday.  Please forgive.--SHEILA."
+
+She handed it to Keith.  He read it without comment and put out his
+hand for a form.
+
+Helen stood close to him, almost touching his elbow, while he wrote:
+"Arrange to be free to-day.  I am coming this morning.
+Urgent.--MACNAIR."
+
+"Be off with that double quick," he said to the boy.  Then, as the
+red wheels vanished, he turned to Helen.  "Just a chance it may get
+there before me and pave the way.  I've business first in Wynchmere
+that can't wait."
+
+He spoke so completely in his ordinary manner that Helen felt almost
+as if their wonderful moment must have been a dream.  But it was no
+dream.  He was talking of it now in the same calm fashion.
+
+"We won't tell Mark--yet," he said.
+
+"No.  It would be cruel.  I may not even go up till you come back.
+He said he might work this morning and wanted to be alone.  Afraid, I
+suspect, of my returning to the attack!  Oh, Keith, I _hope_ you
+succeed."
+
+"I mean to.  I hope she will.  That's more to the point."
+
+Helen sighed.  "He simply adores her.  One sees the difference--after
+Bel.  But he's hopelessly obstinate about it.  I was quite angry with
+him last night."
+
+"Poor old chap!"  His eyes dwelt upon her tenderly.  "Sometimes I
+wonder which of your two children you love best."
+
+"And I've sometimes wondered which of them _you_ loved best!" was her
+counter-thrust to that impermissible remark.  "Go soon.  And ... come
+back soon.  Mrs. Melrose will never forgive me!"
+
+"We'll survive that.  And she'll have me to reckon with now...."
+
+Before leaving, he came to her in the drawing-room, where she was
+filling a bowl with daffodils.  Silently he held out his hands, and
+she gave him both her own.
+
+"Rather wet!" she said, to cover a troublesome feeling of confusion.
+
+He smiled and drew her nearer.  Then, very quietly, as if it were an
+act of consecration, he stooped and kissed her.
+
+Afterwards she came out and waved to him from the doorstep as he
+drove away: the same Keith to whom she had played elder sister for
+years; and yet so strange a Keith that it was as if she had barely
+known him till to-day.
+
+Putting on her garden hat, she wandered out into the pinewood,
+dappled with sun and shadow, jewelled with patches of moss.  Letters
+were waiting to be written.  Let them wait.  She had a consuming need
+to be alone with her amazing knowledge and her so strangely
+reawakened heart.
+
+Fifteen years!  What was she, to deserve such love from two such men
+as Richard and Keith?  Deliberately she linked their names in her
+mind.  Deliberately she stood still with uplifted face and closed
+eyes.
+
+"Richard, _do_ you understand?" she whispered just above her breath.
+
+Only the pine branches rustled overhead.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+  "You yourself know not how beautiful is your gift."
+                            SIR RABINDRANATH TAGORE.
+
+
+It was Mrs. Melrose who opened Keith's telegram, and her elation may
+be conceived.  Sheila was engaged, at the moment, on a new arrival;
+but directly she was free, her mother beckoned her mysteriously into
+the passage and handed her the envelope.
+
+"I opened it, just to see if there was any answer," she explained
+with repressed eagerness, while Sheila stood frowning at the cryptic
+message that might mean ... anything, everything.
+
+"I _wish_ you wouldn't open telegrams addressed to me, Mother," she
+said, none too graciously.  It was the second time lately that Mrs.
+Melrose had been guilty of that dire offence; and she was one of the
+very few people who knew that Sheila could snap on provocation: a
+sufficiently illuminating comment on their relation.
+
+"Well, really, dear, one doesn't _expect_ a wire to be a love-letter
+in disguise!"  Sheila, who could be dense at times, missed the
+delicate implication that Keith's message amounted to a proposal of
+marriage.  "Of course you must be free.  I'll arrange it with Sister
+Nelson."
+
+"Oh, please don't trouble.  _I_ can arrange things all right."
+
+And she did.
+
+Some twenty minutes later, Mark's car drew up before the spacious,
+flat-fronted Georgian house; and Keith sprang out of it.  To-day all
+his movements had a new alertness.  He looked and felt five years
+younger.
+
+Three shallow steps led up to the front door; and just as he reached
+these, Sheila came out in hat and coat, plainly prepared to join him.
+She looked paler than usual, but entirely mistress of herself.
+
+"You got my wire?" he asked superfluously.
+
+"Yes.  Very mysterious!  So I thought ... better be prepared for
+emergencies.  Nothing wrong with Mums?"
+
+"No.  Mums is particularly well this morning.  It's not on _her_
+account I'm here."
+
+The emphasised word brought a faint glow to her cheeks.
+
+"Mark?" she asked, almost under her breath.
+
+"Yes--Mark."
+
+"You mean--he sent you?"
+
+"No.  The impulse was altogether my own.  I am here because I believe
+in you, Sheila.  Come for a stroll down the garden before we start
+back."
+
+She came--bewildered, palpitating; prepared for almost anything but
+the actual event.
+
+From the house of many windows, park-like grounds sloped gently down
+to the Wynch, broader and lazier here than at Wynchcombe Friars.  The
+grass was bright with crocuses and early daffodils; and on the bare
+boughs overhead, half-opened leaf-buds gleamed like jewels in the sun.
+
+Keith, as he turned, caught sight of Mrs. Melrose at an upper window,
+watching them go.
+
+"Your mother has her eye on us," he remarked casually.  "I believe
+she thinks I've come tearing over to make you an offer of marriage!"
+
+"_You_!"  Sheila confronted him in blank surprise.
+
+"Don't be alarmed," Keith reassured her, with his whimsical smile.
+"I've already been guilty of it once this morning."
+
+At that her eyes opened wider than ever, and he saw light dawn in
+their depths.
+
+"Mums?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+"How simply splendid!  It's been my pet, private dream for ages.  But
+I was afraid...."
+
+"So was I.  Horribly afraid.  Without reason, I am thankful to say."
+
+A pause.
+
+"I want ... to congratulate you," she said softly.  "There's no one
+on earth like Mums.  She's the youngest of us all.  And ... Mark?
+Isn't he glad?"
+
+"Mark's in no mood to be glad about anything," Keith answered, with a
+straight look.  "That's why I am here.  We haven't told him.  We
+can't tell him ... yet.  And we can't help him, either of us.  Only
+you can do that."
+
+She flushed hotly and looked down at the crocuses.
+
+"I'm afraid you overestimate my powers.  I've done all ... I can.'
+
+"No, you've _not_ done all," he corrected her gently.  "Or I should
+not be standing here.  I take it that you ... care for Mark: that you
+have always cared."
+
+She drew in her lips and answered nothing.  Then she looked up at
+him, her secret unveiled.  Strangely, it did not hurt her that he
+should know.
+
+"I thought so," he remarked to her silence.  "And on the strength of
+that conviction, I've come over to put the whole truth before you.
+It's no easy thing I'm going to ask of you, Sheila.  But I believe in
+you--as I said."
+
+He moved on in speaking, and she moved on beside him--wondering,
+fearing, yet longing to know all.
+
+Plainly and straightforwardly he told of her mother's letter;
+quieting, with a tactful hand, her incidental burst of indignation.
+Personally, he assured her, he felt quite grateful to Mrs. Melrose,
+who, in trying to do him one good turn, had inadvertently done him
+another.  That consideration calmed her a little and touched up her
+sense of humour.
+
+"If she's been any help to you and Mums, I forgive her ... for that
+part of it," she said in a voice that quivered between a laugh and a
+sob.  "But I won't forgive her ... about Mark ... _ever_."
+
+And when Sheila said that, she meant it.  She had never forgiven Bel.
+It was the streak of Northern granite in her disposition.  Keith had
+purposely included those remarks that had roused his own anger.  He
+had reckoned them his strongest cards.  He now perceived them to be
+stronger than he had supposed, and he suffered a passing twinge of
+conscience.  But the matter at stake was too vital to be tripped up
+by side issues: and he went on to tell her, in quiet forcible
+phrases, of Helen's distress, of Mark's devotion that appeared to
+confirm rather than weaken his flat refusal to sacrifice her on the
+altar of his own supreme need.
+
+And Sheila heard him out in an unbroken silence.  He could only gauge
+the effect of his revelation by her uneven breathing and an
+occasional movement of her lips.
+
+When he had told all, he stood still and confronted her.  "There, my
+dear," he said, a deep note of feeling in his voice.  "It's a tragic
+tangle.  And, for love of Mark and you ... and Helen, I'd go almost
+any length to unravel it.  But there's only one who can do that.  And
+now perhaps you can guess what it is I came to say."
+
+She still remained silent, studying a patch of crocuses, realising
+acutely all that his request implied; shrinking, yet passionately
+longing to go in and win that which was her own.  She had gone very
+pale again.  But as realisation deepened, her face became one burning
+blush.
+
+"Do you mean ... that I must offer ... myself?" she asked at length,
+addressing her question to the crocuses.  "I--I almost did it
+yesterday.  At least ... I'm sure he saw it in my eyes.  And ... he
+slipped away."
+
+"Yes.  He would.  I am afraid--if you really want to convince him,
+you must put aside all the conventionalities, all your natural
+reluctance, and ... show him your heart.  _Make_ him believe.  He
+only hesitates, remember, from the highest motives and because he has
+no conception how deeply you care.--Now, will you come along with me
+and put everything right for the four of us?"
+
+There fell another tremendous silence.  Keith knew well that he could
+scarcely have asked a harder thing of her.  Second after second she
+stood there, her hands clenched, wrestling with her pride, her
+dumbness....
+
+Then she said slowly, as if speaking to herself: "I can't ... I
+_can't_.  It's against my whole nature.  The words would never come.
+Oh _why_ ... won't he understand?"
+
+"Because he is a very chivalrous gentleman," Keith answered with
+significant emphasis.  "And if you really can't bring yourself to
+make a move, well ... I must go back alone and confess I was
+mistaken.  Of course, _I_ can speak to him myself.  But if I failed,
+I should fail fatally.--It is strange.  I felt absolutely certain of
+you, Sheila.--Is that your final, considered answer?  Am I to go?"
+
+By a wise intuition he refrained from pleading or further argument,
+and his stern quietness stung her as no reproach would have done.
+
+Suddenly she felt Mark himself tugging at her heart.  She saw the
+look in his eyes, heard again those terrible words that haunted her
+brain.  And was this to be the end?  Were they all to be made
+miserable because there were bounds that her pride could not pass, a
+limit beyond which she could not or would not go?
+
+Against that arbitrary decree all her deeper, truer nature rose up in
+revolt.  There were no bounds ... no limits.  In that critical moment
+of decision her childhood's creed of courage came timely to her aid.
+
+She looked up at last: and Keith saw that he had prevailed.
+
+"No.  You are _not_ going back alone," she said, steadfastly meeting
+his gaze.  "I was a coward to say ... I couldn't speak to him.  I
+can.  And I will."
+
+"Ah--that's more like it!"  There was vast relief in Keith's tone.
+"You've saved my reputation for omniscience.  Now, come and save Mark
+from himself."
+
+"_If_ I can," she murmured, with a catch in her breath; and they
+hurried back up the slope towards the house.
+
+There on the steps they descried, afar off, the severely repressed
+figure of Mrs. Melrose radiating congratulations.  Keith, the
+resourceful, felt suddenly nonplussed.
+
+"Sheila, look there!  We're done for."
+
+"Not a bit of it," Sheila replied in her most matter-of-fact tone.
+"We're in a mortal hurry and we don't happen to notice her till we're
+in the car."
+
+"Capital!  Lucky I backed it well away from the entrance."
+
+It was done--and neatly done.  Keith was just turning the car when he
+ostentatiously caught sight of his would-be mother-in-law.
+
+"Good morning, Mrs. Melrose," he called out cheerfully.  "I'm sorry I
+can't stop.  So good of you to spare her.  She's badly wanted over
+there."
+
+Mrs. Melrose, completely mystified and very much annoyed, fluttered a
+perfunctory hand and went back into the house wondering irritably
+what on earth had happened to Mr. Macnair.
+
+That Lady Forsyth could have happened to him never so much as entered
+her head.  There had been a good deal of talk at one time; but it had
+fizzled out for want of fuel.  Her chief concern at the moment was to
+prevent Sheila from becoming entangled again with Mark.  When he
+would have been a really suitable match, she had muddled things.
+Just like her!  But now--position or no position--it wouldn't do at
+all----
+
+
+And Sheila, with never a word of her intent, was speeding through the
+April sunshine, bent upon a permanent entanglement with Mark: one
+that no mother in creation could undo.
+
+As the little car lightly tossed the miles aside, he?  courage and
+purpose rose steadily.
+
+Keith, for all his own eagerness, drove at a low speed.  He knew
+well, from experience, how rushing through the air scatters and
+paralyses thought.  They had but seven miles to cover; and he guessed
+rightly that Sheila needed a quiet breathing space to mobilise her
+spiritual forces for the brave adventure in hand.  So they drove
+leisurely between woods and fields and uplands, quick with new life
+and young desires.  And throughout that most companionable drive they
+scarcely exchanged a word.
+
+Only when Keith handed Sheila out of the car, he retained her hand a
+moment in his own.
+
+"Luck follows pluck," he said, smiling.  "_I_ have no fear.  But
+first we must find Helen."
+
+They found her basking on the terrace with an open book in her lap.
+As a matter of fact, she had not read two pages.  She had done
+literally nothing but await their arrival.
+
+"Well, here she is," Keith said, as Helen sprang up to greet them.
+"My private trophy.  How's Mark?"
+
+"I haven't been near him.  I began to think you would never come."
+
+"Ungrateful!" he reproached her gravely.  "We've done it all in
+record time.  We deserve congratulation.  Now--give her your blessing
+and don't keep her long."
+
+While the blessing was in progress he left them.  His own turn would
+come in time.
+
+"Dearest one," Sheila murmured between her kisses, "I _do_
+congratulate you with all my soul.  He's a treasure.  This
+morning....  But you shall hear all that ... afterwards."  Then she
+stood back a little, blushing and smiling.  "Mums, tell me true.  Am
+I being very unspeakable ... after yesterday?"
+
+"Very unspeakable!"  The older woman slipped an arm round her and
+drew her through the open French window into the house.  "God bless
+you, child," she added gravely, kissing her again.  "You're being
+angelically a woman.  But, darling ... are you quite, _quite_
+sure...?"  Her eyes completed the question.  "I've had pricks of
+conscience, waiting here.  Have you realised ... _every_thing?"
+
+"Yes.  Everything.  Long ago," Sheila answered steadily, a hot wave
+of colour in her cheeks.  "It simply doesn't count.  Nothing counts
+... except him."
+
+"In that case I'm satisfied.  But I couldn't forget what you said
+once at Inveraig."
+
+"Oh, that!  Fancy your remembering.  But now--it's Mark.  He's my
+share of the War.  And ... gospel truth, Mums--I'd sooner 'mother'
+him than anything else on earth."
+
+"Oh--if you can only make him understand _that_!"  Tears stood in
+Helen's eyes.  "It was not for nothing I christened you 'Queen of the
+Poor Things.'"
+
+"Mums, how _dare_ you!"  For a moment Sheila was really angry.  "He's
+_not_ a poor thing.  He's the most glorious thing that was ever
+made.--Now, let me fly upstairs.  'Valour will come and go!'"
+
+Her low laugh had a break in it, and she hurried from the room.
+
+Outside the studio, she paused to steady herself.  No sound came from
+within; and she opened the door an inch or two.
+
+"Mark," she called softly.  "It's Sheila.  Can I come in?"
+
+"_Sheila!_"  Amazement and smothered passion sounded in his voice.
+But there was fear in it also.
+
+"Come in, of course," he added hastily, as if to cover both.
+
+She found him by the open window, sitting at his easel, crayon in
+hand: and on the easel stood a delicate pastel study of herself.  If
+courage had wavered a moment, it revived at that.  She looked from
+him to the picture with lifted brows.
+
+"Quite good," she said, slipping past the awkward explanation of her
+presence.
+
+"It isn't.  It's a wretched travesty!'" he answered bluntly.  "But
+one must do something ... to keep going."  He paused and scanned her
+face searchingly.  She did not attempt to avoid his gaze.  Her eyes
+were radiant, as if the windows of her soul were flung open to the
+sunrise.
+
+Sudden fear came upon him and sudden remembrance of his mother's
+words.  He had not fortified himself to resist this.  Yet resist it
+he must.
+
+"_Why_ have you come again so soon ... like this?" he asked, going
+straight to the point in his usual fashion.
+
+"Because ... after yesterday..."  She hesitated and drew in her lips.
+"There could be only one way to put things straight between us and
+make you unsay that bitter thing about the dead having the best of
+it.  Mark, it haunted me.  But ... I couldn't have brought myself to
+come, like this, so soon, except for Mr. Macnair and Mother's
+extraordinary letter to Mums."
+
+"What letter?  Has Mums anything to do with this?" Mark flashed out.
+
+And Sheila was thankful she could answer truthfully: "No.  It was all
+Mr. Macnair.  He came over because of that letter--I'll tell you
+afterwards--and I found he knew ... about my caring.  He was
+splendid.  He made me see ... there was only this one way.  He
+said--'Come!'  And he encouraged me...."
+
+"Keith encouraged you?  It was no business of his."  Mark had found
+his voice at last.  He had forgotten the mysterious letter.  There
+was only room in him for one hope, one fear.  "Sheila ... what does
+it all mean?  Are you----?"
+
+"Yes, Mark"--her voice took its deepest, tenderest tone--"I am ...
+asking you to marry me, because I know, now, that you will never do
+it yourself.  And I know, now, that you do ... care...."
+
+"'_Care_?' ... I simply worship you.  And, for that very reason, I
+will not take advantage of your heavenly impulse of devotion; though
+God knows I honour you for it.  Broken things appeal so strongly to
+your heart.  You have to make allowance for that."
+
+"I have to make allowance for nothing."
+
+Her tone was repressed now and her eyes veiled.  Was she to repeat
+yesterday's ordeal, with aggravations?
+
+"You don't understand," he forced himself to say.  "You can't
+understand all it would mean.  Sheila ... a man in my case has no
+right to offer, or to accept, marriage: and I ... I refuse to snatch
+happiness at your expense.  Keith ought to have known me better by
+now....  You, of all people, tied to a cripple ... a sort of
+glorified hospital nurse!  If I shrank from sacrificing a worthless
+woman like Miss Alison, is it likely I would sacrifice you...?"
+
+But Sheila had endured enough.
+
+"Oh, Mark, can't you see?  Are you determined not to see?" she cried,
+her low voice tremulous with passion, her twilight blue eyes full of
+pain.  "For her, it would have been a sacrifice.  For me ... I--I
+can't find the word that's big enough.  It's not that I don't
+understand--and admire your reluctance.  But you have to understand
+too.  Mark ... must I say all?  Must I tell you that from the very
+beginning, since I was sixteen, there's been no one ... but you.
+There will never be.  You are all I want on earth.  You say ... you
+have no right.  But remember, there's every hope....  Dr. Norton says
+so.  And even if there was ... no hope, if you were three times as
+helpless as you are, I would still rather be _your_ hospital nurse
+than any other man's ... wife."
+
+At that, with an abrupt movement, he turned away and hid his face in
+his hands.
+
+"Oh, leave me ... leave me," he murmured desperately.  "How _can_ I
+see clear, think clear, when you stand there ... tempting me----"
+
+His voice broke.  Silence fell--and lasted.
+
+Sheila continued to stand there.  Her hands were cold, her limbs
+shaking.  If she left him now, his strong will would reassert itself.
+She could not go through this again.  And there an end.
+
+Pride argued: "In the face of flat refusal, you can go no further."
+But she saw Mark's shoulders heave ... once; and there could be no
+more argument; no more pride----
+
+Without a word she went close up to him, slipped a hand round his
+head and drew it against her breast.
+
+In that fashion she gave him her answer.  Yet he made no sign, till
+two tears fell upon his hands that hid him from her.  Then he
+uncovered his face and looked up into hers, as an earth-bound soul
+may look into heaven.
+
+"Beloved," he whispered, "it's a desperate risk.  You've no right ...
+I've no right...."  But his arms were round her; and his head, that
+still leaned against her, felt the glad leap of her heart.
+
+"We have the right, if we choose," she whispered, and stooped her
+face to his....
+
+
+At last he drew her down on to his knee and set her a little away to
+reassure himself that the impossible had actually come to pass.
+
+And she sat there smiling at him: too purely exultant to do anything
+but smile.
+
+"You little thing--you little lovely thing!" he said in a low voice
+of rapture.  "You're the first person that's ever cut right across my
+will and bowled me over.  I swore to poor Mums last night that
+nothing would induce me----"
+
+"And you were conquered by a little thing!"
+
+Very tenderly she laid her cheek against his.  "Most wholesome for
+you--and a triumph for me!"  She paused, dwelling on him ...
+realising in her turn.  "Mark, I wish I wasn't quite so small, then I
+could help you more, my own self.  Lifting you--and that."
+
+"Lifting me!"  His eyes were misty with tenderness.  "You've lifted
+me clean out of the nethermost hell.  Isn't that enough in the way of
+assistance?"
+
+"Yes--if I could believe----!"
+
+"Well, you may believe.  I'm not given to high-flown talk.  You've
+saved me from being a curse to myself and every one belonging to me.
+That's the way Sheila-people are made!"
+
+Then his face grew grave and the arm that was round her tightened its
+hold.  "Mouse, it's difficult to speak of ... the hidden things.  But
+I do want you to know what it means to me that you should have come,
+like this, refusing to let convention or my own limitations stand in
+the way of our great reality.  It's readjusted the whole perspective
+of things, that was in great danger of getting out of gear
+altogether."
+
+"Yes, I saw that," she answered, her eyes filling.
+
+"Of course you did, angel of wisdom.  And you've made me see--no end
+of things.  There'll be some talk, no doubt, among the kind of people
+who must talk--or perish.  But, when all's said, if you and I choose
+not to regard this irksome disability, no one else has any call to
+make a howl about it.  After all it's nothing--less than nothing--in
+to-day's vast sum of tragedy.  And there remains the great
+outstanding fact that it has saved me, so as by fire, from a woman
+whose love would have wrecked my life.  Also--it has given me you,
+which is a long sight more than I deserve."
+
+"No--_no_," she protested low and passionately.
+
+"I say 'Yes!'  And I mean it.  But--there's one thing I wanted to
+tell you yesterday and couldn't, for fear of telling ... all the
+rest."
+
+"You were very cruel yesterday."  A quiver crossed her face, and he
+held her closer still.
+
+"My darling, how could I dream you cared--like that!  It knocked me
+to pieces.  And now--I can only thank God all my days for Keith's
+insight and your courage.  But ... what I'm trying to tell you is
+this.  The deepest and best in me, that was yours in the beginning,
+_has been_ yours all along--buried under rubbish, but alive and
+untarnished by any contact with _her_.  That's what I meant when I
+said she never touched the depths.  Mouse--are you glad to know that?"
+
+She only sat there gazing at him, mute homage in her eyes.  "It's too
+much.  I can't say it," she murmured at last.  "And now--there's poor
+Mr. Seldon torn in two.  Perhaps ... it's the same with him----"
+
+"Seldon!  Was it _her_ you were talking of?  Poor devil!  Is she
+going to marry him?"
+
+"I don't even know if he's asked her.  They seem to have talked round
+it all.  She says ... you raised her standard.  He implies ... I've
+done the same for him.  That seems to make complications.  So there
+they are----"
+
+"And here _we_ are--God be praised!" Mark broke in, a note of triumph
+in his deep voice.  "And we're going to achieve something between us,
+you and I, now you've made a live man of me again.  There's a deal of
+work I can still do with a Sheila-wife to help me.  How about
+dedicating the arts and crafts colony entirely to our own fellows
+disabled in this war.  And those who are fit for it shall be put on
+to the land.  My own disablement won't hamper me there.  It's a
+mustard-seed of a notion.  It may grow into a tree.  There's a
+programme for you.  All your doing!  You've been my real source of
+inspiration from the first.  And you always will be.--Don't cry about
+it, Beloved.  It's too splendid for anything."
+
+"Yes--that's why," she answered lucidly--and could no more.  The
+great wave of joy that swelled up within her broke softly in a shower
+of tears.  It was the pent-up emotion of months.  And Mark drew her
+head against his shoulder, comforted and caressed her; kissed away
+her tears and held her to him without a word till she had regained
+her lost control.
+
+Then: "You're not going back to-night; don't you think it!" he said
+in her ear.
+
+"I don't think it," she answered, with a small shiver of happiness.
+"Mother would bite me to pieces."
+
+"Well, that settles it.  You're under my orders now: and you take
+your leave from to-day.  You must write a note to explain.  Macgregor
+can handle the little car.  She almost drives herself, and he can
+bring any scrap of luggage you're wanting."
+
+"Listen to the autocrat!"  She sat upright now, beaming on him.  "And
+I've got to write a note of explanation.  And _you_ don't realise yet
+what that means."
+
+"Why?  Where's the mystery?  That letter?"
+
+"Yes.  Interfering people are quite useful sometimes--by accident!"
+
+"Well--let's hear.  What's she been up to now?"
+
+Thus invited, Sheila gave him a revised version of the letter that
+had achieved precisely what it set out to prevent.  She omitted the
+most egregious remarks and skimmed lightly over the talk about
+herself and him; but before she had finished her recital, Mark's
+quick brain perceived whither it led.
+
+"Of course, Mums took it straight to Keith," he broke in, exultantly,
+"and of course the good fellow had to blurt out the truth in
+self-defence.  Well played, Mrs. Melrose!  But why the dickens didn't
+they come straight up and tell me.  Here I've been left in the dark
+for hours: and I'm supposed to be master of this house!"
+
+"Well, you see," Sheila explained, dimpling, "Mr. Macnair was too
+busy rushing off to fetch me.  And Mums couldn't bear to tell you
+when you were so unhappy."
+
+Mark's eyes softened at that.  "Just like her.  How the woman spoils
+me!  And I'm afraid you'll be as bad."
+
+"I'm not so sure.  I can be sterner than Mums.  Mr. Macnair could
+tell you that...."
+
+"Could he?  I'll ask him.  And he carried you off, like an elderly
+Lochinvar, under your mother's very eyes!  Splendid chap, Keith!"
+
+"Yes.  But he ought to know you better by now," she reminded him
+gravely.  "And he had no business to encourage me!  But with Mother
+flinging me at his head, you can't blame the poor man if he was in a
+hurry to account for me by foisting me on to you.--And I'm going to
+tell Mother the whole truth," she concluded, colouring a little at
+thought of the ordeal.  "That I knew you wanted me and wouldn't ask,
+so I came over and proposed to you ... and I'm not ashamed of the
+fact!--Oh, look, there they are on the terrace, too pleased with each
+other to bother about us."
+
+For a few minutes Mark sat watching them with a very full heart.
+Keith was talking in his grave quiet fashion, and Helen walked close
+beside him, listening--absorbed.
+
+"Seems a shame to interrupt them," Mark said softly.  "But I want
+her.  She's had worry enough on my account, bless her!  And this is
+going to atone for it all."
+
+Then at the top of his voice, he called out: "Hullo, Mother!  Mums!
+Come along and report yourself at headquarters."
+
+She stopped, turned, and stood a moment smiling up at him.  His
+voice, his face told her all she needed to know.
+
+"Come on--quick!" he repeated; and she came, as always, obedient to
+his summons.
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78882 ***
diff --git a/78882-h/78882-h.htm b/78882-h/78882-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9662722
--- /dev/null
+++ b/78882-h/78882-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,21731 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html>
+<html lang="en">
+
+<head>
+
+<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
+
+<link rel="icon" href="images/img-cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover">
+
+<meta charset="utf-8">
+
+<title>
+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Unconquered, by Maud Diver
+</title>
+
+<style> 
+body { color: black; 
+       background: white; 
+       margin-right: 10%; 
+       margin-left: 10%; 
+       font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; 
+       text-align: justify }
+
+p {text-indent: 1.5em } 
+
+p.noindent {text-indent: 0% }
+
+p.t1 {text-indent: 0% ;
+      font-size: 200%;
+      text-align: center }
+
+p.t2 {text-indent: 0% ;
+      font-size: 150%;
+      text-align: center }
+
+p.t2b {text-indent: 0% ;
+      font-size: 150%;
+      font-weight: bold;
+      text-align: center }
+
+p.t3 {text-indent: 0% ;
+      font-size: 100%;
+      text-align: center }
+
+p.t3b {text-indent: 0% ;
+      font-size: 100%;
+      font-weight: bold;
+      text-align: center }
+
+p.t4 {text-indent: 0% ;
+      font-size: 80%;
+      text-align: center }
+
+p.t4b {text-indent: 0% ;
+      font-size: 80%;
+      font-weight: bold;
+      text-align: center }
+
+p.t5 {text-indent: 0% ;
+      font-size: 60%;
+      text-align: center }
+
+h1 { text-align: center }
+h2 { text-align: center }
+h3 { text-align: center }
+h4 { text-align: center }
+h5 { text-align: center }
+
+p.poem {text-indent: 0%; 
+        margin-left: 10%; }
+
+p.thought {text-indent: 0% ;
+           letter-spacing: 2em ;
+           text-align: center }
+
+p.letter {text-indent: 0%; 
+          margin-left: 10% ;
+          margin-right: 10% }
+
+p.footnote {text-indent: 0% ;
+            font-size: 80%;
+            margin-left: 10% ;
+            margin-right: 10% }
+
+.smcap { font-variant: small-caps }
+
+p.transnote {text-indent: 0% ;
+             margin-left: 10% ;
+             margin-right: 10% }
+
+p.intro {font-size: 90% ;
+         text-indent: 1.5em ;
+         margin-left: 0% ;
+         margin-right: 0% }
+
+p.intro2 {font-size: 90% ;
+          text-indent: 0 ;
+          margin-left: 5% ;
+          margin-right: 0% }
+
+p.quote {text-indent: 4% ;
+         margin-left: 0% ;
+         margin-right: 0% }
+
+p.report {text-indent: 4% ;
+         margin-left: 0% ;
+         margin-right: 0% }
+
+p.finis { font-size: larger ;
+          text-align: center ;
+          text-indent: 0% ;
+          margin-left: 0% ;
+          margin-right: 0% }
+
+</style>
+
+</head>
+
+
+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78882 ***</div>
+
+
+<p class="t3">
+<br><br>
+UNCONQUERED
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br></p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  "The stars are threshed and the souls<br>
+  are threshed from their husks."<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Blake.</i><br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  "Men and angels, ye<br>
+  Whom stain of strife befouls,<br>
+  A light to kindle souls<br>
+  Bear, radiant, in the stain."<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Meredith.</i><br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<h1>
+  UNCONQUERED<br>
+</h1>
+
+<p class="t3b">
+  <i>A Romance</i><br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p class="t3">
+  BY<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="t2">
+  MAUD DIVER<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="t4">
+  <i>Author of "The Strong Hours," "Far to Seek,"<br>
+  "Lonely Furrow," etc.</i><br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br></p>
+
+<p class="t3">
+  BOSTON AND NEW YORK<br>
+  HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY<br>
+  The Riverside Press Cambridge<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p class="t4">
+  COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY MAUD DIVER<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p class="t4">
+  The Riverside Press<br>
+  CAMBRIDGE * MASSACHUSETTS<br>
+  PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p class="t3">
+  To<br>
+  MARY<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="t3">
+  IN REMEMBRANCE<br>
+  OCTOBER 10TH, 1901<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+  "A turn, and we stand in the heart of things..."<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Browning.</i><br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p class="t3">
+AUTHOR'S NOTE
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The chapters dealing with France, and the incidents
+connected with these, are founded on fact.  I merely
+mention this because it seems to me that the main incident
+gains in effect from the knowledge that it is not mere
+invention.&mdash;M. D.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p class="t3">
+CONTENTS
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+<a href="#chap0101">
+BOOK I.&mdash;BEL
+</a>
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+<a href="#chap0201">
+BOOK II.&mdash;THE UTTER PRICE
+</a>
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+<a href="#chap0301">
+BOOK III.&mdash;VIA CRUCIS
+</a>
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+<a href="#chap0401">
+BOOK IV.&mdash;VIA LUCIS
+</a>
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0101"></a></p>
+
+<h2>
+BOOK I
+<br>
+BEL
+</h2>
+
+<p><br><br></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER I
+</h3>
+
+<p class="intro">
+"Whom does love concern save the lover and the beloved?
+Yet its impact deluges a thousand shores."&mdash;E. M. FORSTER.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Mark Forsyth pushed back his chair, left the
+dinner-table, and strolled over to the bay-window.
+He drew out his cigarette-case, but apparently forgot
+to open it.  He stood there, looking out across the
+garden, that merged into rocky spaces of heather and
+bracken, and culminated in an abrupt descent to
+Loch Etive.  Low above the darkening hills the sunset
+splendour flamed along the horizon, and all the waters
+beneath were alight with the transient glory.  But
+the man's face wore the abstracted air of one who
+dwells upon an inner vision.  Though the subdued
+flow of talk behind him entered his ears, it did not
+seem to reach his brain.  "Bobs," his devoted Irish
+terrier, crept out from under the table, and joining
+his master, made sundry infallible bids for attention,
+without success.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently alluring whiffs of cigarette smoke, intruding
+on his dreams, reminded Sir Mark of the unopened
+case in his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I vote for coffee on the terrace, Mother," he said,
+turning his eyes from the glory without to the
+dimness of the unlighted dining-room.  "Then we'll
+have the boats out.  There's going to be an
+afterglow and a half presently."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I told Grant about the coffee two minutes ago,
+dear," Lady Forsyth answered, smiling; but her
+eyes dwelt a little anxiously on the silhouetted view
+of her son's profile, as he set a match to his cigarette.
+The straight, outstanding nose and square chin
+vividly recalled his dead father.  But the imaginative
+brow was of her bestowing and a splash of light
+on his hair showed the reddish chestnut tint of her
+own people: the tint she loved.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come along, children," she added, including in
+that category four out of her five guests&mdash;two girls,
+unrelated to herself, Ralph Melrose, a Gurkha
+subaltern, and Maurice Lenox, an artist friend of Mark's.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Keith Macnair, professor of philosophy&mdash;his rugged
+face lined with thought, his dark hair lightly frosted
+at the temples&mdash;was the only genuine grown-up of
+her small house-party.  A connection of her own,
+and devoted to both mother and son, he was so evenly
+placed between them in the matter of age that he
+could play elder brother to Mark or younger brother
+to Lady Forsyth as occasion required.  And, whenever
+professional claims permitted, occasion usually
+did require his presence, in some capacity, either at
+Wynchcombe Friars or Inveraig.  Between times,
+he lived and lectured and wrote philosophical books
+in Edinburgh; and never, if he could help it, did he
+fail to spend most of his summer holiday at Inveraig.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the party rose from the table he joined
+Mark in the window; and as the two girls stood back
+to let Lady Forsyth pass out, she slipped an arm round
+each.  Her love of youth and young things seemed
+to deepen with her own advancing years.  But she
+had her preferences; and it was the arm round Sheila
+Melrose that tightened as they passed through the
+long drawing-room to the terrace, where coffee was
+set upon a low stone table in full view of the illumined
+lake and sky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's splendid to have you safe back again, child,"
+she said, releasing Monica Videlle and drawing Sheila
+down to the seat beside her.  "India's monopolised
+you quite long enough.  There's some mysterious
+magnetism about that country.  People seem to
+catch it like a disease.  And I was getting alarmed
+lest you might succumb to the infection."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Melrose smiled thoughtfully at the sunset.
+"I'm not sure <i>I</i> haven't succumbed already!" she
+said in her low, clear-cut voice.  "I have vague
+tempting dreams of going back with Ralph when
+his furlough is up; or with Mona, to help doctor
+her Indian women.  But probably they'll never
+materialise&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"More than probably, if I have any say in the matter!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Forsyth spoke lightly, but under the lightness
+lurked a note of decision.  She had her own
+private dreams concerning this girl with the softly
+shining eyes under level brows, and the softly resolute
+lips that never seemed quite to leave off smiling even
+in repose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At mention of India, Miss Videlle's thoughtful
+face came suddenly to life.  "It would be lovely for
+me," she said.  "Too good to be true!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Never mind, Miss Videlle," Maurice consoled her almost
+tenderly.  "This ripping evening's not too good to
+be true.  And <i>I</i> can put you up to some tips for
+squaring Lady Forsyth&mdash;in strict confidence of course!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He bent towards her with a slightly theatrical offer
+of his arm, and they moved off to a seat near the
+ivy-covered wall, looking towards the distant rapids.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Forsyth glanced after them with a passing
+twinge of concern.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl&mdash;a fairly recent acquisition of Sheila's&mdash;was
+shy and clever, with a streak of dark blood in her
+veins.  She had done brilliantly at Oxford, and was
+now qualified to take up the medical work in India
+on which she had set her heart.  Sheila had acquired
+her while going through a course of massage and
+magnetic healing, for which she showed so distinct
+a gift that she had serious thoughts of taking it up
+in earnest.  A vague idea of going out with Monica
+Videlle had been simmering in her brain for the past
+week; but she had not spoken of it till to-night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Wonder what's come to old Mark," mused Ralph
+pensively, stirring his coffee.  "Thought this picnic
+arrangement was all for his benefit&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Rather so!" Mark's voice answered him, as he
+and Macnair strolled round the corner of the house.
+"Hurry up with the coffee, Mums.  I love dabbling
+my oars in the sunset.  Lenox, old chap, you two
+might go on ahead and give the word."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They went on readily enough; and the rest soon
+followed them through the wilder spaces of the
+garden, down rocky steps to the bay, where sand and
+rough grass shelved gently to the water's edge.  Here
+they found two boats already afloat, with Maurice
+and Monica&mdash;she was commonly called
+Mona&mdash;established in one of them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Forsyth, nothing if not prompt, privately
+consigned Ralph to that boat, Mark and Keith to
+her own.  It was a heavenly evening, and she thanked
+goodness they were going to have it to themselves:
+quite a rare event since Maurice Lenox had discovered
+that superfluous Miss Alison.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Coming to row stroke for us?" she asked as
+Mark handed her in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He shook his head, smiling down at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's to be Keith's privilege!  I'm for the other
+boat."  But neither his smile nor the light pressure
+of her arm could atone for the refusal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Pointed and purposeless," she denounced it
+mentally; but within a very few moments his purpose
+was revealed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Down Connel way first, Keith," he called out, as
+he pushed off his own boat and sprang lightly in.  "I
+want to run up to the village.  Miss Alison and her
+friend might like to join us."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So they rowed towards Connel at his command:
+and for Lady Forsyth the pleasure of the outing was
+gone; the peace and beauty of the evening spoilt
+by fierce resentment against these intrusive strangers
+who had no authorised position in the scheme of
+things.  And her natural vexation was intensified
+by concern for Sheila: though whether the girl took
+Mark's sudden and strange defection seriously it
+was impossible to tell.  She wore that smiling,
+friendly graciousness of hers like a bright veil, that
+seemed to baffle attempts at intimacy, while it
+enhanced her charm.  Even with Lady Forsyth, who
+loved her as a daughter, she had her reserves, notably
+on matters nearest her heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"After all, she knows the real Mark almost as well
+as I do," Mark's mother reflected by way of
+consolation.  "And she's wiser than I am, in many ways,
+though she <i>is</i> nearly thirty years younger.  I'm
+probably racing on miles too fast.  He's barely
+known the girl a fortnight.  He <i>couldn't</i> be so crazy!&mdash;  All
+the same, he's no business to&mdash;it's distracting!"
+she concluded, her irritation flaming up again at
+sight of the two figures that were now approaching
+the shore, escorted by Mark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Alison, the taller one, had unquestionably
+height and grace to recommend her.  Mark, who
+stood six feet in his socks, could barely give her a
+couple of inches; and the languid deliberation of her
+movements had, on Lady Forsyth, the same maddening
+effect as a drawl in speech.  Her own brain and
+body were too quick, in the original sense of the word,
+not to make her a trifle intolerant towards the
+"half-alive"; and, rightly, or wrongly, Miss Alison was
+apt to produce that impression even on her admirers,
+though no doubt they expressed it differently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Personal prejudice apart, Lady Forsyth preferred
+the girl's companion, Miss O'Neill, in spite of her
+wrong-headed zeal for the Suffrage and Home Rule.
+Had Bel Alison been out in search of a foil, she could
+have discovered none better than this big-hearted,
+fanatical woman of five-and thirty, shortish, and
+squarely built, with an upward nose, an ugly,
+humorous mouth, and a quantity of rough brown hair in
+a chronic state of untidiness.  Lady Forsyth gathered
+that she was an active philanthropist, and that the
+incongruous pair shared a flat somewhere in Earl's
+Court.  To outward seeming they had certainly
+nothing beyond the same address in common.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If Bel's movements were over-deliberate, Miss
+O'Neill's were apt to be sudden; and she strode into
+the boat with the decision of one given to putting her
+foot down to some purpose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Steady on!  You evidently don't do things by
+halves!" Sir Mark remonstrated, laughing, and
+consigning her to a cushion in the bows.  Bel had
+already usurped Maurice's seat astern, and Mark
+rowed stroke&mdash;this time without need of invitation.
+Then they turned about and moved slowly up the
+loch, dabbling their oars in the sunset fires and
+shivering the purple shadows of the hills.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And if for Helen Forsyth the pleasure of the
+evening was over, for Mark it had but just begun.  And
+she knew it.  Therein lay the sting.  Though "the
+boy" was now very much a man, she could honestly
+have said, two weeks ago, that nothing beyond minor
+differences and mutual flashes of temper had marred
+the deep essential unity of their relation&mdash;a unity
+the more inestimably precious since he was now all
+she had left of her nearest and dearest on earth.
+Husband, daughter and younger son had all passed on
+before her into the Silence, and of her own people one
+brother alone remained.  At the moment he was High
+Commissioner of New Zealand, and seemed disposed
+to stay on there indefinitely when his term of office
+expired.  The Empire, he wrote, was a saner, sweeter,
+more spacious place of abode than twentieth-century
+England, which seemed temporarily given over to
+the cheap-jack, the specialist, and the party
+politician.  And she&mdash;while loving every foot of her
+husband's country and her own&mdash;understood too well
+the frequent disappointment of those who came, on
+rare and hardly earned leave, from the ends of the
+earth and failed to find, in picture-palaces and
+music-halls, in the jargon of Futurists and demagogues,
+the England of their dreams.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For this cause, her sole remaining brother had
+become little more than a memory and a monthly
+letter.  Yet, could she never account herself a lonely
+woman, while she had Keith for friend and mentor,
+Mark for son, and Sheila for&mdash;more than
+possible&mdash;daughter.  What business had this unknown girl to
+step into their charmed circle and unsettle the very
+foundation of things?  Never, till to-night, had it
+seemed possible to Mark's mother that she could
+arrive at dreading the fulfilment of his heart's desire.
+Yet that was what it amounted to.  Dread lurked
+behind her surface irritation.  The touch of second
+sight in her composition made her vaguely conscious
+of danger in the air.  Small wonder if she anathematised
+Maurice Lenox for his knack of picking up
+promiscuous strangers, and, in this case, aggravating
+his offence by failing to appropriate his own discovery.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0102"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER II
+</h3>
+
+<p class="intro">
+"Quand on vous voit, on vous aime; quand on vous aime, où
+vous voit-on?"
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+For a while the two boats kept in touch, so that talk
+passed easily between them.  Miss Alison spoke
+little.  Silence rather became the fair pensive quality
+of her charm&mdash;and probably she knew it.  The
+uncharitable supposition was Lady Forsyth's: and she
+was fain to confess that pensiveness and silence
+harmonised well with the fine, straight nose, the mass of
+dull gold hair, and eyes of that transparent blue which
+lacks warmth and depth, yet has a limpid beauty of
+its own, especially where the pupils are large and the
+lashes noticeably long.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark, too, had fallen silent: the worst possible
+sign.  But Miss O'Neill atoned for all deficiencies
+by discoursing vigorously to Maurice's swaying
+shoulders, upon the latest developments of the suffrage
+campaign.  Maurice, equal to any emergency, had
+no difficulty in airing his own views on the subject&mdash;as
+it were, through the back of his head&mdash;to one
+who had hammered shop windows with her own hand,
+though she graciously drew the line at firing churches
+and wrecking trains.  Yet she was a woman of
+generous and, at times, noble impulses.  The greater
+part of her small annuity was lavished on a very
+personal form of rescue work&mdash;and on Bel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's rank injustice, say what you please," she
+declared in her strong vibrant tones, "to imprison
+and torture poor misguided girls who have the courage
+of the faith that's in them.  The real blame lies on
+the heads of those who've driven us to extremes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That sounds very fine, Miss O'Neill, but I'm
+afraid it won't hold water," Macnair put in quietly
+from the other boat.  "It has been the standing
+excuse of fanatics and&mdash;dare I add?&mdash;criminals all
+down the ages.  Your latest forms of argument will
+simply harden and justify opposition to a cause that
+is not without certain elements of justice and right."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His pleasant voice had the clear, leisured enunciation
+of the scholar, a quality peculiarly exasperating
+to the red-hot enthusiast whose thoughts are, in the
+main, emotions intellectually expressed.  "Justice
+and right indeed!" Miss O'Neill fairly hurled the
+words at him.  "That's all we're asking, isn't it?
+And precisely what we'll never be getting under a
+man-made Government and man-made laws."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Macnair smiled and shrugged his shoulders.  He
+had no mind to let argument and recrimination
+desecrate the peace and glowing beauty of a Highland
+summer evening; and with practised ease he slid into
+the calmer waters of generalisation, as much in the
+hope of weaning Lady Forsyth from troubled thoughts
+as for the pleasure of expressing his own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The truth is," he said, resting on his oars, while
+the boats drifted into a luminous bay, "every age,
+like every country, has its moral microbe; and the
+microbe of this one is 'Down with everything';
+'Can't; won't; shan't; don't; Pass it along the line,'
+that's about the tune of it, in all ranks.  Kipling
+may or may not be a classic poet, but his Commissariat
+Camels puts the present-day spirit into a nutshell.
+For nearly a hundred years the world has been fed on
+a steady diet of revolt; and now we have the climax,
+distaste for duties and clamour for rights.  The fine,
+brave old wisdom of acceptance is altogether out of
+court&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark, withdrawing his gaze from Miss Alison's
+profile, treated him to a smile of amused approval.
+"Why this sudden access of eloquence, old man?"
+he asked; and Keith deliberately winked over his
+shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Miss O'Neill there's to blame; and the modern
+world does seem rather egregiously modern when
+one's been living for months in a backwater with
+Pindar for company."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, Keith, have you really found time for your
+promised translation of the Odes?"  Lady Porsyth&mdash;herself
+a translator of some distinction&mdash;leaned eagerly
+forward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I've been making time for a few of them," he
+answered, pleased with the success of his diversion,
+"by neglecting my Bergson book."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Have you got them here?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  They're in type, awaiting your consideration."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well done.  You'll publish them, of course?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He shook his head.  "Not even to please you!
+I've simply been enjoying myself, exploring a little
+deeper into the heart of an old friend; one who could
+look life in the face without feeling convinced that
+he personally could have made a better job of it.
+One suspects even our poets, these days, of being
+propagandists in disguise.  Pindar is as sublime and
+as useless as a snow-peak; and one can no more
+convey the essence of him in English than one could
+convey the scent of a rose in Parliamentary language!
+Yet one is fool enough to try!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila, who had been listening with her quiet
+intentness, remarked softly, "<i>Why</i> don't we all
+learn Greek?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because the humanities are out of court in an
+age of scientific materialism.  Wasn't there a
+promise, once, that I should teach <i>you</i>?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl flushed with pleasure.  "I thought you'd
+forgotten."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And <i>I</i> thought Miss Videlle had persuaded you
+to give up everything for this massage you're so keen
+about."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Their talk took a more personal tone, and Lady
+Forsyth's attention strayed again towards the other
+boat.  It had drifted a little farther off, and a change
+of seats was in progress between Mark and Miss
+Videlle.  One moment his tall figure loomed against
+the dying splendour; the next, he sank cautiously
+down beside Miss Alison, who vouchsafed him a
+sidelong glance of welcome.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We're moving on a bit, Mother," he sang out,
+seeing her face turned in their direction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They moved on accordingly: and it did not occur
+to Lady Forsyth that Miss O'Neill, sitting alone in
+the bows, obscured from vision of the disturbing pair,
+was in much the same mood as herself.  Lonely,
+passionate, and emotional, her thwarted womanhood
+had found in Bel Alison an object on which she could
+lavish at once the protective tenderness of a mother
+and the devoted service of a man.  Unhappily,
+this last included a consuming jealousy of those who
+had a better natural right to the girl than herself.
+Diligently and skilfully, therefore, she had scattered
+seeds of prejudice against the unjust half of
+creation&mdash;which, by the way, she very much appreciated in
+units, while denouncing it in the mass.  By way of
+a more positive deterrent, her slender means were
+taxed to the utmost that Bel might have cushions
+and flowers and curtains to suit her fastidious taste.
+No one, least of all Miss Alison, suspected the extent
+of her secret shifts and sacrifices.  And, intermittently
+she had her reward.  But no skill in self-deception
+could blind her to the fact that her lavish devotion
+was as dust in the balance against the passing
+attentions of a baronet, lord of two estates, and a
+fine-looking fellow to boot.  To-night the conviction
+rankled with peculiar keenness by reason of her
+suppressed irritation with Macnair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Shirking the issue.  Just like a man!" she
+soliloquised wrathfully.  "And dragging in his own
+trumpery translations by the heels.  The conceit of
+the creatures!  And the folly of them.  Wasting
+good abilities over the vapourings of a musty old
+Greek poet.  Blind as a bat, or simply not caring a
+snap that the world's crammed with evils crying out
+to be reformed.  Let them cry, so long as he can
+scribble in peace...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this point her somewhat chaotic thoughts were
+interrupted by music from the other end of the boat.
+Mark was singing Wallace's lullaby, <i>Son of Mine</i>;
+half crooning it, at first, for the benefit of Miss Alison,
+who did not know it.  But as the strong swing of
+the melody took hold of him, he let out his voice to
+the full&mdash;a true, clear baritone; music in its every
+cadence; and something more than music, for those
+who had ears to hear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Harry, raging inwardly, heard, and understood
+very well that the days of her own dominion were
+numbered.  Lady Forsyth understood equally well;
+but she had passed beyond the raging mood.  The
+song was an old favourite; every note of it laden with
+associations; and in spite of herself tears started to
+her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As for Mark, others might understand or not as
+they pleased.  He was singing to an audience of one;
+to the girl who sat beside him, her uncovered head
+lifted and half turned away toward the dark sweeping
+curves of the hills.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the murmur of applause died down she
+turned to him with the slow lift of her lashes that,
+conscious or no, thrilled him afresh at each repetition.
+"I didn't know you could sing like that," she
+said softly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can't always," he answered, flushing under her
+implied praise.  "Sometimes&mdash;it just takes hold of
+me.  Don't you sing yourself?  I'm sure you've
+got music in you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She suppressed a small sigh.  "Oh yes.  It's one
+of my poor little half-fledged talents; useless for want
+of proper development.  My elder sister's the clever
+one, and she got all the chances.  She found me
+convenient sometimes for duets."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Duets?  Good.  I know plenty.  Let's have a
+try.  What was her line?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Classical.  Mostly German."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark was silent a moment raking his memory.
+Then he had an inspiration.  "Mendelssohn's 'I
+would that the love'...?  Wasn't that the sort
+of thing?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  Very much so."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Right!  We'll give them a treat.  You take the air."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She shook her head.  "You're going much too
+fast.  I never said I'd sing; and&mdash;I've rather forgotten
+the words."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You won't slip out of it that way!" he told her;
+and leaning close he crooned under his breath: "I
+would that the love I bear thee, My lips in one word
+could say; That soft word&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh yes, I remember now," she cut him short
+rather abruptly; but a faint colour showed in her
+cheeks and this time she did not lift her lashes.
+"Very pretty, but drenched with sentiment.  That's
+the worst of German songs."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, you can't beat the music of 'em," he persisted,
+rebuffed a little by her tone, and hoping it was
+assumed for the benefit of Miss Videlle, who was
+most vexatiously in the way.  "I'm set on it anyhow.
+Are you ready?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Taking her smile for consent he moved one hand,
+beating time in the air; then, without preliminary,
+their united voices took up the song.  Bel's, though
+sweet and true within its range, proved too slight an
+organ to stand the open-air test, and Mark had need
+to moderate his full-toned alto accordingly, thereby
+giving an added effect of tenderness to words and
+music already sufficiently expressive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And again Lady Forsyth&mdash;a most unwilling
+listener&mdash;understood everything far too well.  Deliberately
+she hardened herself against the appeal of the music.
+For this time she was simply angry&mdash;angry as she
+had never yet been with her son; though, needless to
+say, she attributed his egregious behaviour entirely
+to Miss Alison.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How can he?  How dare he!" was the cry of her
+pained heart.  "So unlike him.  An insult to Sheila.
+Flinging his folly in her face."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Sheila was drawing her finger-tips lightly
+through the water, watching the effect with that
+shadowy smile of hers, and to all appearances simply
+enjoying the song.  Almost Lady Forsyth found
+herself hoping that it was so.  In any case, she was
+thankful when the "exhibition" ended, and Maurice's
+cheerful voice was heard calling out: "Your turn,
+Miss Videlle!  Can't you give us a music-hall
+masterpiece by way of diversion?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Miss Videlle disowned all knowledge of masterpieces,
+music-hall or otherwise, and Maurice himself
+came nobly to the rescue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm not up to Mark's style; but I'm top-hole at
+genuine Harry Lauders," he volunteered with becoming
+modesty.  "And as you're all so pressing, it
+would be ungracious to hide my light under a bushel."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good egg!" sang out Ralph from the second boat.
+"Give us 'Roamin' in the Gloamin'.'"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Maurice, with a deliberate wink at Mark over
+Miss Videlle's shoulder, proceeded to give it for all
+he was worth, in the broadest of broad Scotch.  But
+Mark was in no mood to see the joke of a performance
+that sounded far too like a travesty of his own chosen
+love-song.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I kissed her-r twice and I asked her-r once if
+she would be my br-ride," sang Maurice with insolent
+gusto, burring his r's like a policeman's rattle;
+and Mark simply wanted to kick him into the loch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Forsyth, on the other hand, was privately
+blessing the boy's foolery, that seemed to clear the
+air and sent the boats skimming homeward to the
+swing of chorus on chorus; only her son's voice being
+conspicuous by its absence.  Keith's boat was leading
+now; and without turning round deliberately
+she could see nothing of the two who haunted her
+mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was perhaps fortunate; for Mark's arm lay
+along the back of the seat, his shoulder was within
+three inches of Bel's; and under cover of the music
+they had picked up the dropped thread of their talk
+in lowered tones that imparted tender significance to
+the simplest remark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't call your singing a half-fledged talent,"
+he said with a faint stress on the pronoun.  "You've
+the gift, anyway.  Why not make more of it&mdash;study,
+practise?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She smiled and lifted her shoulders.  "I've tried,
+but I couldn't keep it up.  Laziness, perhaps; I
+don't know.  Vanity, perhaps, a little.  I either
+want to do things splendidly or else&mdash;I can't be
+bothered.  I need someone to spur me, to encourage me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, I should have thought Miss O'Neill&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Harry?  Oh yes, she'd lie down and let me walk
+over her if I wanted to.  But she's swamped in 'the
+Cause' and philanthropic work.  As for my talents,
+when I wanted the helping hand it wasn't there;
+and now&mdash;it's too late.  I've dabbled first in one
+thing and then in another, and frittered away what
+little ambition I ever had."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The emotionless quiet of her tone suggested a noble
+resignation to the general obstructiveness of life; a
+resignation that, to the man's strenuous spirit, seemed
+alike pathetic and premature.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, you're only on the threshold of things,"
+he rebuked her gently.  "What are the talents you've
+dabbled in?  Do tell me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I've written a little and acted a little.  I
+wanted badly to take that up in earnest.  Heavens!
+Wasn't there a row!  So I fell back on the writing.
+Verses, chiefly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Have they appeared, any of them?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A few.  Here and there.  I was vain enough
+once to have a booklet printed out of my allowance.
+Then there was a worse row than ever."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But why?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well&mdash;they weren't exactly of the pretty-pretty
+order.  And my father's a clergyman: that kind of
+clergyman."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I see."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He saw her, in fact, a creature of fine sensibilities,
+striving for self-expression, thwarted, discouraged,
+and misprized by those who should have been her natural
+helpers, and his heart went out to her the more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"May I&mdash;" he hesitated.  "Miss Alison, won't
+you let me see some of your verses?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No.  Not for the world."  She flushed suddenly
+and her voice had a tremor in it.  It was the first
+time he had seen her really perturbed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm sorry," he began; but she was mistress of
+herself in a moment and turned the matter off with
+a laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We're both making mountains out of molehills!
+The verses were wretched poor stuff, most of them.
+Father was quite right to condemn them; but he went
+the wrong way about it.  He usually does.  They
+were just the outcome of&mdash;an influence; a passing
+phase.  I hated them myself&mdash;afterwards.  One does
+go through phases, doesn't one?  At least I do.  It's
+rather interesting.  Saves one from the bottomless
+pit of boredom, the only thing we're really afraid of
+nowadays."  She made the statement in all seriousness.
+"But&mdash;looking back&mdash;one sometimes wonders
+how much that other girl was really me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not answer at once; partly because he was
+trying not to be aware that while she spoke there had
+blown through him a chill breeze of doubt: an
+unwelcome reminder that after all he knew nothing as
+yet of her life, her antecedents, or&mdash;if it came to
+that&mdash;of herself.  He only knew that almost from the
+first moment of contact she had put a spell upon him
+that he had neither the power nor the will to resist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do I seem to be talking utter nonsense?" she
+asked suddenly in a changed voice; and doubt fled
+like a wraith at sunrise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Rather not.  I was only hoping&mdash;that this <i>is</i>
+the real you.  I'm not simply a phase&mdash;am I?&mdash;like
+all the rest?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At that she turned to him with the lazy uplift of
+her lashes, and the astonishing blue of her eyes flashed
+on him like a light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Isn't it&mdash;rather too soon to tell?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Is</i> it?" he challenged her boldly, and exulted to
+see the blood rise in her cheeks.  More than that he
+could not achieve.  For another Lauder chorus had
+just died down and they were nearing the shore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Look here," he said, low and rapidly.  "I am off
+up the loch to-morrow in my little steam
+yacht&mdash;fishing.  Come along too&mdash;will you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She gave him a reproachful look.  "I can't.  You
+know I can't."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, well, bring your police dog along if you must;
+and I'll get Lenox to make a square.  Will that do?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  I'll ask Harry.  If it is like to-day&mdash;it'll
+be lovely."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Better than to-day, I hope," he muttered, wondering
+very much if he could wait till then, and cursing
+the wire entanglements of convention.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm going to see you home," he announced as he
+handed her out of the boat, and repeated his
+intention when all the party was ashore.  "Good night,
+Mums," he added, laying a hand on his mother's
+shoulder.  "Lenox is coming along with me.  Leave
+things open for us, will you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very well, dear; don't be too late," she said,
+looking up at him; but between the gathering dusk
+and his own preoccupation he missed the mute appeal
+of her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the short walk back to the village, Miss
+O'Neill took complete command of affairs.  Having
+at last recovered her treasure, she slipped a retaining
+hand through Bel's arm, and never a chance had
+Mark of another intimate word.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She graciously fell in with the morrow's plan,
+however; and afterwards, as the men strolled back,
+smoking, to Inveraig, Maurice was frankly informed
+what would be expected of him on the occasion.  Mark
+betrayed his repressed excitability by speaking rather
+more rapidly and abruptly than usual.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm running this show altogether&mdash;you understand?
+We're not going off on a blooming picnic
+to play consequences.  No nonsense, mind.  And
+no Harry Lauder&mdash;confound you!  All you and Miss
+O'Neill are required to do is to make yourselves
+scarce.  Fact is, you're only there because I couldn't
+get&mdash;Miss Alison to come alone."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Maurice smiled broadly.  "I gathered as much.
+But I say, Forsyth," he hesitated and took a pull at
+his pipe, "do you really mean business?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Rather so.  What kind of a cad d'you take me
+for?" snapped Mark, whose temper was quick at
+the best of times.  "Think I'd play the fool with a
+girl like that?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sorry, old chap.  Didn't intend to rile you.  Only
+to a mere outsider, it seems just a trifle precipitate.
+Besides&mdash;one naturally thought&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, dry up.  Nobody asked you to think."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was pain as well as anger in Mark's tone.
+He knew very well what Maurice thought&mdash;what
+others were likely to think; and although Lady
+Forsyth did not guess it, his sensitiveness on Sheila's
+account almost equalled her own.  It hurt him
+horribly that by any act of his he should seem to cast
+even the slightest slur on her.  And he saw no reason.
+For years they had been like brother and sister.
+Certainly, since her return from India he had caught
+himself wondering&mdash;But before wonder could
+crystallise into belief, Bel had arisen in her moonlight
+beauty and all the stars of heaven had suffered eclipse.
+Come to think of it, he owed young Lenox a debt
+he could never repay; and for the rest of the way
+he made royal atonement for his flash of temper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good night, old chap," he said when they reached
+the house.  "I'm not turning in just yet."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And for more than half an hour he paced the terrace,
+wondering, hoping, dreaming; while his mother
+lay awake in her bedroom above, both windows flung
+wide, listening to the restless sound of his footsteps;
+wondering also; and scarcely daring to hope that he
+had already spoken and been refused.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not until she heard him come in, at last, and shut
+the door of his room, did she let her tired body have
+its way and fall into a troubled sleep.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0103"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER III
+</h3>
+
+<p class="intro">
+"You know not the limit of this kingdom, still you are its
+queen."  RABINDRANATH TAGORE.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Miss O'Neill, as might be supposed, proved no
+easy subject for diplomatic manipulation.  Long
+before they had made an end of their picnic-lunch,
+in a glen of rocks and birches and purple cushions of
+heather, she had effectually given Mr. Lenox to
+understand that she was neither to be deceived nor
+coerced by his tactful attempts to detach her from
+the other two.  Years of pushing and shouldering
+through obstacles in the Suffrage campaign, had so
+far blunted her finer sensibilities that she could
+smilingly hold her ground even among those who
+obviously wished her elsewhere: and she held it to-day,
+till Mark lost patience and frankly took the bull by
+the horns.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I say, Miss O'Neill, you might take pity on Lenox
+and honour him with your company up the glen,"
+he said; and beneath his engaging tone there lurked
+a faint note of command.  "He's no fisherman, and
+he can't keep himself to himself for ten minutes on
+end.  So you see, it would be a real act of charity to
+remove him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, Sir Mark, I can see that without spectacles,"
+answered the redoubtable Harry, challenging him
+with her greenish-brown eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good business!" Sir Mark retorted unabashed.
+"When you reach the high moor you'll be rewarded
+by a view that's worth some climbing to see.  Of
+course, if Miss Alison would prefer to go with you&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Miss Alison's far too comfortable where she is,
+thanks!" Bel interposed with her deliberate drawl.
+She had settled herself on a low rock and sat dreamily
+watching the river, elbows on knees, chin cradled
+in her hands.  Without changing her attitude, she
+glanced up at Sir Mark and her smile seemed to link
+them in completest understanding.  "If the necessity
+for silence becomes too overpowering I can always
+go to sleep.  I'll be as good as gold, Harry dear&mdash;"  She
+shifted her gaze to Miss O'Neill's resolute,
+rebellious face.  "And I think Sir Mark can be trusted
+not to let me fall into the river!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The upward jerk of Harry's head implied wholesale
+distrust of the species; but finding herself
+cornered she surrendered at discretion.  "Well,
+Mr. Lenox," she said, "since it's a case of obeying orders,
+we must make the best of each other.  This way,
+I suppose?"  She strode on before him up the
+narrow, stony path; and Maurice, with an abortive
+grin at Mark followed in her wake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Keeping well ahead of him, she toiled on indomitably
+till trees were dwarfed to bushes and the primeval
+splendour of the high moors came suddenly into view.
+Before them, and upon either hand, the heather and
+the heavens were all.  It was as if they stood upon
+the shore of an amethystine sea, studded with islands
+of granite and juniper, and shadowed only by
+slow-moving continents of cloud.  For Maurice, with the
+blood of Eldred and Quita Lenox in his veins, such
+a vision was among the rare things that could smite
+him to silence.  He drew a great breath and stood
+very still, his young, expressive face glorified, passingly,
+by the artist's pure joy in colour, and the Scot's
+love of the land.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss O'Neill, a townswoman by taste and habit,
+would have preferred a throng of human faces, any
+day, to the sublime emptiness around them.  Hot,
+breathless, and in a ferment of anxiety, she sank
+gratefully on to the nearest rock and looked up at
+her companion; but the light on his face checked her
+ever-ready tongue.  She liked the boy.  He was more
+than "a mere he-thing," and that streak of the woman
+in him appealed strongly to the masculine strain in
+herself.  But protracted silence irked her; and very
+soon anxiety goaded her into speech.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mr. Lenox, how long have you known Sir Mark
+Forsyth?  Are you acquaintances or friends?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Maurice considered that point without removing
+his eyes from the heather.  "Rather more than
+acquaintances, I should say, and on the way to
+becoming friends.  I've known him two years on and
+off.  But I've never yet been to Wynchcombe Friars,
+his Hampshire place.  He's crazy about it.  They
+say you never know the real Forsyth till you've seen
+him there.  I'm going there this autumn, to be
+converted from Futurism and Experimental Art in
+general!  At least that's his notion.  He's a splendid
+chap.  Chockful of ideas.  A bit reactionary, some
+of them.  He's dead against what we should call
+industrial progress, and what he calls sacrificing the
+man to the machine.  They've got a great scheme
+on, he and his mother and Macnair, for joining up
+all the scattered attempts at reviving handicrafts
+and guilds&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, bother their crafts and guilds!" Miss O'Neill
+broke in with scant ceremony.  "Sheer fads!  Result
+of riches and idleness.  <i>I</i> want to know is he the
+kind of man to take up a girl violently&mdash;you see how
+it's been&mdash;just to pass the time?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No!"  Maurice rapped out the negative with
+unusual vehemence.  "As a matter of fact, I believe
+he intends to offer her his heart and his title and all
+his worldly goods before we get back to them."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss O'Neill started visibly.  "What&mdash;on a fortnight's
+acquaintance?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  A trifle steep, isn't it?  And, for a man
+in his position, a wife's a rather important item."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Something more than an amiable housekeeper&mdash;is
+that your meaning?"  Miss O'Neill rounded on
+him, a flash of temper in her eyes.  "I thought better
+of you, Mr. Lenox.  But you're all alike in the grain.
+A man in Sir Mark's position must have a beautiful
+figurehead for his dinner-table: a graceful,
+accommodating doll, that he can hang with jewels and silks
+and satins.  But my Bel's no doll-woman, for all her
+soft manners and sweet temper.  No doubt he flatters
+himself that, in a fortnight, he's read her from cover
+to cover: and he'll be telling her, sure as fate, that
+he's the one man on earth to make her happy, and
+think he's paying her the compliment of her life into
+the bargain!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Good-natured Maurice began to feel that Forsyth
+had been a trifle inconsiderate saddling him with
+a virago whom he was quite at a loss how to appease.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well&mdash;compliment or no, she's free to refuse him,"
+he remarked soothingly; "and after all, it's the
+natural thing."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss O'Neill pounced on the words almost before
+they were out.  "<i>Of course</i> it's the natural thing for
+a man like Sir Mark&mdash;spoilt by his mother, one can
+see with half an eye&mdash;to snatch at a beautiful woman.
+And where does a girl's freedom come in when a man
+dazzles her brain with extravagant lover's talk?
+Besides&mdash;he's rich.  She's poor.  It almost amounts
+to bribery.  I hate the whole thing.  I came away
+for her sake, to give her a chance of knowing him
+better, just in case&mdash;  But if it's true, what you say,
+I shall go straight down again&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She sprang up from her rock and faced about;
+but Lenox, smilingly determined, stood astride across
+the narrow path.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Excuse me, Miss O'Neill, not if I can prevent it,"
+he said.  "Forsyth's going to have his chance fair
+and square.  Of course if you're game for a free
+fight&mdash;well, come on!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a second she looked him up and down, a sudden
+flicker of humour in her eyes.  "I tackled a
+policeman once.  A bigger fellow than you.  And
+he was very glad to get rid of me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can well believe it," Maurice answered with
+becoming gravity.  "But look here, just consider,
+what earthly good would you do by deferring the
+inevitable&mdash;say, twenty-four hours&mdash;and probably
+annoying Miss Alison into the bargain?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The last shot told.  Harry let out her breath in a
+great sigh.  "Life's a bewildering business," she mused
+aloud.  But common sense told her he spoke truth;
+and she liked him none the less for backing up his
+friend.  "Very well, Mr. Lenox, I give it up.  You
+evidently have instructions from headquarters, and
+I'll stay here till you give the word.  But scenery
+bores me stiff; so please make yourself as interesting
+as you know how."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Right you are," said Maurice; and indicating
+her deserted rock he flung himself on the heather at
+her feet in such a position that her prosaic figure in
+its knitted coat and rough skirt should not intrude
+upon his vision of the landscape.  Then he proceeded,
+in his fluent fashion, to enlarge on the subject
+uppermost in his mind&mdash;Sir Mark's queer conviction that
+a wide-spread revival of handicrafts and guilds would
+go far to solve the strike problem by restoring the
+creative sense in labour and renewing the broken
+link between art and life&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For Sir Mark himself, at that moment, life held
+only one purpose, one achievement worthy of serious
+consideration&mdash;the linking of his own destiny with
+that of the girl who seemed capable of maintaining
+indefinitely her graceful pose of contemplation.  It
+was a pose that revealed to admirable advantage the
+long lines of her figure and the beauty of her small
+head with its close-fitting coils of hair.  Her
+discarded hat lay on the heather at her feet.  Close to
+her chosen rock sprang a young birch, its supple
+grace a reflection of her own; its drooping plumes,
+stirred by the breeze, dappling her blue dress with
+tiny restless shadows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Was it some day-dream that so held her, Mark
+wondered, or pure consideration for the trout that
+he had presumably come out to catch?  Either way,
+her silence and abstraction had the effect of so
+intensifying his own emotion that speech seemed
+desecration.  Besides&mdash;he had spoken already.  Could there
+really be any need to tell her again how swiftly and
+strangely she had swept him from his moorings, so
+that life held nothing, momentarily, but his glorified
+vision of herself?  Last night the sound of her voice,
+echoing his own confession, had silenced, for good,
+the whispers of prudence that strove to curb his
+impetuous spirit, counselling delay.  If only that
+confounded Miss O'Neill had given him a chance
+while the glamour was on them both, the whole
+thing might have seemed less egregiously precipitate.
+Now that he had schemed for half an hour's privacy;
+now that she sat there, only a few yards away,
+seemingly unaware of his existence, a shiver of uncertainty
+chilled him.  A fortnight ago to-day, while he and
+Maurice were rambling in search of subjects, he
+had beheld her for the first time.  For him that
+fortnight was an indefinable age.  For her it might
+simply be fourteen days&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But this sort of havering would never do.  He was
+a strong man, not unschooled in suffering, but little
+used to being thwarted in his desire.  And he did not
+seriously expect to be thwarted now.  Deliberately
+he laid aside his fishing tackle, and leaning on one
+elbow looked up at the girl, whose rock was set a
+little higher along the sloping bank of the stream.
+For a few seconds he took his fill of her, from the
+coronet of her hair to the seductive curves of her
+mouth and chin that made such tender atonement
+for the cool directness of her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still she did not move; but her lips parted in a
+small sigh, and the spell was broken.  Mark rose
+and planted himself before her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Miss Alison," he began&mdash;and could get no further.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well?" she asked with that distracting lift of her
+lashes.  "Is the precious tackle out of gear?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her coolness almost angered him and gave him
+sudden command of his tongue.  "<i>Tackle</i>?  D'you
+really suppose I came out here to catch trout?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You said so last night.  And you seemed to be
+making elaborate arrangements&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So I was&mdash;to get half an hour alone with you,"
+he announced bluntly, and saw the ghost of a blush
+creep up under her skin.  He wanted simply to take
+her in his arms without more ado.  Instead, he sat
+down close to the rock, plunged his hands in the
+heather, and leaned towards her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I was trying to tell you last night.  Didn't you
+understand?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"N-no.  I thought the music&mdash;and the sentiment
+had rather carried you away."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It was <i>you</i> who carried me away.  The music
+was a kind of safety-valve, that's all."  He leaned
+still nearer.  "Bel&mdash;is there a ghost of a chance for
+me?  Is it sheer conceit and impertinence on my
+part to ask&mdash;so soon?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No&mdash;oh no."  And suddenly she covered her
+face as if the intensity of his gaze affected her like
+strong sunlight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was silent a moment, watching her and crushing
+the heather in his strong fingers.  Then, very gently,
+he laid a hand on her knee.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What is it?  Tell me.  I must know."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At that she dropped her hands.  By chance or
+design, one of them fell on his own and rested there.
+The light contact sent electric thrills up his arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's just it," she said with her slow smile.
+"You must know.  But we neither of us do&mdash;yet.
+It's been a wonderful fortnight.  And if I haven't
+travelled quite so fast or so far as you, that doesn't
+mean&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course it doesn't.  I'm not such a conceited
+ass as to suppose you could fall in love with me at
+sight.  But now I've spoken&mdash;isn't there any response?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Haven't you felt any?" she asked lightly, and the
+hand that rested on his moved in a just perceptible
+caress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"For God's sake don't play with me!" he broke
+out, half angry again.  "I'm in deadly earnest."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I know.  That's just why one of us must try to
+keep a cool head."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nonsense!  You're simply fencing.  And you
+haven't answered my question."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm trying to.  But I'm half afraid ... to let
+myself go.  No&mdash;don't!"  She warded him off with
+a gesture, but deliberately replaced her hand over
+his.  "It's too sudden altogether.  Wouldn't it be
+wiser&mdash;for both of us&mdash;to wait a little?  You don't
+really know me one bit."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He bowed his head and kissed the fingers that
+covered his own.  "I know I love you," he said simply,
+his deep voice low and controlled.  "And if you
+can say the same, that's enough for me.  The rest
+will be an enchanted voyage of discovery."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Voyages of discovery are rather risky things,"
+she reminded him.  "And sometimes&mdash;they end in
+smoke.  You see, you're not just any one.  I'm
+outside your world; and&mdash;your mother doesn't like
+me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nonsense," he said again, with less conviction
+than before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It isn't.  I'm sure she wants you to marry Miss
+Melrose.  And I thought at first&mdash;you seem very
+intimate."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Naturally.  Our intimacy began when she was
+eight and I was twelve."  He spoke looking out across
+the stream.  Something in him winced at her allusion
+to Sheila in that connection.  But it was only fair
+to her to explain things; and he forced himself to
+proceed.  "Her people are our nearest neighbours
+in Hampshire.  Her mother's the sort of person who
+subsists chiefly on fads and philanthropy&mdash;the kind
+of philanthropy that makes you abominate charity
+and all its works.  When we lost...  Ailsa, my
+little sister, Mother sort of annexed Sheila, unofficially.
+But that doesn't imply&mdash;that she expects me to do
+likewise.  We're devoted to her&mdash;both of us.  She's
+a splendid little person;" he turned now and spoke
+with greater naturalness and warmth.  "Not very
+easy to know.  But <i>real</i>, right through.  You're
+bound to love her.  There&mdash;are you satisfied?"  Without
+warning he slipped an arm round her.
+"Will you give me my answer now?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He felt her yield under pressure of his hand: then,
+with a sudden enchanting simplicity, she lifted her
+face to his&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently she sighed; pushed him from her a little
+and looked steadily into his eyes&mdash;blue, like her own,
+but a deeper, tenderer shade, shot through with fine
+radiations of orange.  Hers seemed still to hold a
+question.  His were purely exultant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Darling, we've done it now," he said under his breath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  I suppose&mdash;we have," she answered in the
+same key.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Suppose?  You're not going back on things,
+after <i>that</i>.  Next question is&mdash;when will you marry
+me?  Next week?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her flush, that had died down, mounted again,
+clear carmine, beautiful to see.  "Oh, Mark!  Give
+me a few minutes to realise it all.  You're so
+impatient.  Such a boy.  You make me feel ... ages
+old&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Look here, I can't have you talking that sort of
+rot," he protested; incorrigibly blunt, even in love.
+"It's morbid sentimentalism.  You see, I'm the son
+of a mother who doesn't know how to feel old at fifty.
+'Boy,' indeed!  You're a mere child yourself&mdash;the
+dearest in creation."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No&mdash;no.  I'm <i>not</i> a child."  Her emphatic protest
+rang true.  "Perhaps your mother has kept the
+bloom on life.  Mine has never had any bloom on it,
+worth mentioning.  I was reared in a groove; a very
+virtuous groove; and ... I didn't fit.  I wanted to
+feel and know and live; to be something more than
+a vegetable in a Wiltshire village.  I knew I had
+talents of sorts; and I felt, if I could only get away
+and have a fair chance, I might achieve something
+worth doing, or, at least ... meet a man worth
+marrying."  She spoke looking away from him across
+the sun-splashed water.  "The only brother I cared
+about went off to the ends of the earth before he was
+twenty.  If I'd been old enough to go with him, I
+wouldn't be here now!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Poor darling!"  He tightened his hold of her.
+"Dreadful calamity&mdash;isn't it?&mdash;to be here now!  But
+didn't your mother understand you&mdash;help you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Poor little mother.  She did her best.  My
+unconventional streak comes from her side.  But she's
+a very tame edition; watered down by an early
+marriage with father, who's as conventional as a
+high-road, but unfortunately not as broad!  Privately,
+I think she was half proud of me and half terrified
+of what I might do next, like the hen in Hans Andersen.
+It was father's pharisaical attitude towards
+my mild vagaries that made me worse, till at last I
+kicked clean over the traces, demanded a reasonable
+allowance (to my amazement, I got it), and went
+off to London, to take the world by storm."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To Miss O'Neill?" Mark queried, a faint anxiety
+in his tone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh no.  Harry's a fairly recent phase.  I boarded
+with a friendly family in the second-rate theatrical
+line.  That was my chosen road to achievement.
+But it didn't come off&mdash;worse luck!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nor the man worth marrying?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her eyes lingered in his.  "Not to any great extent!
+They were rather a mixed lot.  And everything
+seemed in league against me.  I made no headway
+anywhere.  Still&mdash;it was experience.  It was life.
+One was too busy, either hoping or despairing, to be
+dull.  Each new phase seemed to be the discovery of
+a new kingdom, till you found&mdash;you hadn't the key.
+There was the writing phase, the acting phase, the
+American phase&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"America?  Why on earth&mdash;&mdash;?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I don't know.  The chance came.  And the
+notion attracted me.  A bigger, fresher world;
+experience&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You seem mighty keen on experience," Mark
+struck in.  "D'you mean knowledge&mdash;or simply
+new sensations?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She hesitated.  "After all&mdash;new sensations are a
+form of knowledge.  The most interesting on earth.
+I'd go almost anywhere to discover the feel of things&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stopped short, and Mark frowned into vacancy.
+For the first time he caught himself wondering how
+old was she.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>I</i> should say better be an ignoramus than a mere
+connoisseur in sensations," he remarked quietly.
+"But perhaps I missed your meaning."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Perhaps there wasn't any meaning to miss!  I
+was talking&mdash;rather at random."  Then very lightly
+she leaned her head against his.  "Mark&mdash;dearest,
+don't look like that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, you mustn't talk like that," he said with
+decision.  "How long were you in America?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Eighteen months.  Not very pleasant always.
+But it did me no end of good.  I even went home
+for a time, full of fine resolves.  But the poor things
+soon shrivelled up in father's atmosphere.  Then&mdash;it
+was Harry to the rescue."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And now it's Mark!"  With sudden fervour he
+caught her to him.  "No more 'phases' after this,
+my Bel.  You shall have your freedom and your
+chance.  I'll make up to you, all I can, for the bad
+years.  Mother will love you&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bel shook her head.  "She doesn't like me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Darling, she doesn't know you.  Mother may
+have her cranks and prejudices.  But if there's one
+woman on earth she can be trusted to love&mdash;it's my
+wife.  I'll take you to her to-night."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No&mdash;no.  To-morrow.  To-night&mdash;there's Harry.
+It'll be a blow.  You see, when I first came to her,
+I was so sick with everything, I swore I'd never
+marry.  She's jealous already&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Poor soul!" Mark said tenderly.  "But I'm
+jealous too.  I can't share you with Miss O'Neill.
+If it comes to a tug, you'll have to choose between us."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have chosen."  She spoke with genuine fervour;
+and leaning against him, she closed her eyes.  So
+seen, her face looked years younger and of a
+saint-like purity.  Doubts and qualms seemed sacrilege.
+Without a word he kissed her lowered lids, and found,
+to his surprise, that her lashes were wet.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0104"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER IV
+</h3>
+
+<p class="intro2">
+  "I am of an age with each; what<br>
+  Matter if my hair turns grey?"<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&mdash;SIR RABINDRANATH TAGORE.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+That radiant day of summer, all too short for Mark,
+taxed to the utmost his mother's impatient spirit
+that could bear any ill better than the ache of
+suspense, sharpened by premonition of the worst.
+Mark's offhand manner of announcing the day's
+programme to the breakfast-table in general confirmed
+her own secret fear.  And if he were really crazy
+enough to speak, the result was a foregone
+conclusion.  She would be asked to love, as a daughter,
+this alien girl, of whom she knew nothing except that
+she was not the real mate of the real Mark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the thought, a horrid sense of helplessness
+overwhelmed her.  Open opposition would be worse than
+futile: yet smiling acquiescence was beyond her.
+Truth of intercourse&mdash;finest of all fine arts&mdash;was,
+for both mother and son, a necessity of their natures.
+To it they owed that deeper intimacy not often
+attained between one generation and another; but, in
+the present dilemma, it would make things so much
+harder for them both that dread almost outweighed
+her longing for his return.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Breakfast ended, Ralph announced his intention
+of carrying both girls off for a long walk.  Keith
+retired to the study with the <i>Scotsman</i> and a formidable
+pile of correspondence, leaving Helen to her own
+devices.  Nothing she liked better, in normal
+circumstances; for her devices were many and absorbing.
+But to-day the silence and emptiness seemed
+to affect her like a ghostly presence, impalpable, yet
+vaguely threatening.  A chill sense of impending
+disaster swept through her.  She felt suddenly tired;
+oppressed by the dead weight of the years that she
+carried with such valiant elasticity of body and spirit
+and heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Half a century of life had dulled but scarcely
+silvered her red-brown hair; had pencilled fine lines
+between her brows and at the corners of her too
+sensitive mouth.  But youth still triumphed in the eyes,
+in the slender alertness of her figure, in the swift
+impulsion of thought and speech.  Yet she lived and
+felt life&mdash;the whole world's life&mdash;too intensely not to
+suffer moments of sharp reaction; and this was one.
+Hitherto, she had seen Mark's marriage as the chance
+of regaining a daughter.  Now she saw it, rather, as a
+risk of losing her son, and her heart cried out that
+this was more than she could bear.  In the past
+twelve years, she had suffered loss on loss, with a
+sort of fierce stoicism, the nearest approach to
+resignation that one of her nature could achieve.  Now,
+being a mere mother, she must stand aside and watch
+him drifting on to the rocks&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It simply did not bear thinking of; and, gathering
+up her letters, she went in search of work, the unfailing
+anodyne for every ill.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At that time, under Keith's critical supervision,
+she was translating Emile Faguet.  She was also
+studying Russian, with other translations in view;
+and she had correspondents in all parts of Europe,
+many of whom she had never seen.  But these
+activities were fringes merely on the main work of her
+life&mdash;the revival of arts and crafts and home
+industries among Mark's people and the linking up of
+all similar efforts throughout the United Kingdom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet, for all her activities and far-reaching aims,
+her true life had always been centred in her home.
+And she was content that it should be so; content
+to let outsiders dub her "Victorian," for refusing to
+be swept into the maelstrom of modern restlessness;
+to let the "progressives" swirl past her&mdash;social
+reformers, seekers after new religions, new panaceas
+for every ill; content to find time for cultivating the
+art of friendship, not merely in her own class, but
+among Mark's tenants on both estates.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Leisure to possess her own soul and the hearts of
+others was, for her, a simple necessity of life; and
+that very necessity, by limiting her sphere of action,
+was half the secret of her influence and charm.  Ideals
+are uncomfortable things socially, but they have the
+merit of keeping their owners fresh; and the world's
+more strenuous workers found in her home atmosphere,
+a refreshment and inspiration worth some
+sacrifice of activity to preserve in an age of
+wholesale experiment in life and art and religion.  They
+might rate her for living in a backwater; but, as
+intimacy grew, they realised that she was more vitally
+in touch than themselves with the world's greater
+issues; that her uneventful days were rich in
+experience, informed by a central purpose and an unshaken
+faith in certain abiding truths&mdash;periodically obscured
+and neglected, yet as certain to return with power
+as sunshine after rain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"When religion decays and irreligion prevails,
+then I manifest Myself.  For the protection of good,
+for the destruction of evil, and for the firm establishment
+of national righteousness, I am born again and
+again."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Krishna's ancient prophecy, printed in gold on an
+illuminated scroll, confronted her as she entered her
+sanctuary.  The scroll had been a birthday "surprise"
+from Mark; an achievement of schoolboy days
+when he was altogether her own; and the thought
+upset her equanimity afresh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Look where she would, the room was full of him:
+a friendly, intimate room, set in the bastioned tower
+that dated from feudal times.  But arrow-slits had
+long given place to unlimited light and air; and, like
+all rooms that are loved and genuinely lived in, it
+was quick with the personality of one who imparted
+something of herself to the very chair she used and
+the books and pictures on her walls.  These last were
+few and individual; but of the books there was no
+end.  A catholic assembly, they climbed the only
+bit of wall-space not occupied by the grate.  They
+stood about invitingly in revolving cases; and a
+privileged company was piled upon the floor near
+her chair.  Keith often accused her of having an
+untidy mind: and the state of her room betrayed
+her.  The one tidy spot was the writing-table, which
+she never used.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Over the mantelpiece hung an early portrait of
+her husband, that might almost have been a portrait
+of Mark.  But Sir Richard's face was heavier than
+his son's; the brow more massive, the lower lip more
+prominent.  It was a shrewd, virile Anglo-Saxon
+face, unillumined by the Gaelic strain that Mark
+had from his mother.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet, throughout, Sir Richard had respected his
+wife's ideals and enthusiasms, had smiled indulgently
+over her panacea for the democratic peril, and had
+allowed her a fairly free hand in the education of his
+sons.  So long as the heir of Wynchcombe Friars
+remained a staunch Imperialist, he might be as
+constructive as he pleased: and if there was the remotest
+truth in Helen's convictions, let Mark stand for
+Winchester and air his views in Parliament.  That had
+been Sir Richard's practical contribution to the subject.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the Baronet had now been dead ten years;
+and, so far, Mark had made no bid for Parliamentary
+fame.  Helen Forsyth had spent the first years of
+her widowhood travelling in Europe with Keith and
+Mark, who gave promise of developing into a sculptor
+of originality and power.  For his benefit as an artist
+they had lived mainly in Florence, Rome, and Greece,
+with a bias in favour of the first.  For in the great
+Florentine, young Mark had found his acknowledged
+master of his own thoughtful yet fiery spirit.  But,
+for his education as a man, Lady Forsyth had insisted
+on more than a nodding acquaintance with the rest
+of Europe; and finally Mark had spent two years
+leading voraciously at Oxford, largely with the art
+and labour problem in view.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Since his coming of age, he had devoted himself
+heart and soul to sculpture and the management of
+his estates.  But the notion of Parliament still
+remained in abeyance.  The rise of the lawyer-politician
+and the commercial magnate had intensified his
+native distrust of democracy, while the increasing
+narrowness and bitterness of party spirit had
+effectually quenched his natural ambition to stand for
+the county of his birth.  One Forsyth uncle already
+represented the family.  In Mark's opinion that
+sufficed; and neither Keith nor his mother had
+quarrelled with his decision.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was as artist and responsible landowner that
+she longed to see him pre-eminent; and every year
+he had given clearer promise of fulfilling her hope.
+At seven-and-twenty there remained only the last
+and most critical achievement&mdash;his marriage.  On
+this score alone he had caused her more than one
+flutter of anxiety; and now&mdash;&mdash;!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She clenched her teeth to keep back the futile
+curse; and, for the next hour or so, kept her attention
+chained to the intricate task of transposing idiomatic
+phrases and fine shades of meaning from one language
+into another.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was nearly twelve when the door opened and
+Sheila appeared, bringing the <i>Times</i> and the midday
+post: Sheila, with a bright spot of colour in each
+cheek and a smile that radiated sweetness and light.
+How on earth could Mark&mdash;&mdash;?  But that bitter,
+useless question was taboo.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her own smile was more natural than it had been
+at breakfast; but Sheila did not fail to detect the
+lurking shadow in her eyes, or the significant fact
+that she did not eagerly tear open the paper and
+plunge into the latest letter from Belfast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mums, haven't you spent enough of this glorious
+morning grinding at Emile Faguet?" she said, kneeling
+down and laying a hand over the open page.
+"You look tired&mdash;worried."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I <i>am</i> worried," Lady Forsyth admitted with a
+direct look, and Sheila's colour ebbed a little.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Unhappy, are you&mdash;about Mark?" she asked very low.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  Haven't I reason to be?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But, Mums&mdash;she seems a very sweet person.
+And if he cares&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My dear, you're as bad as the rest of them about
+that girl."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Forsyth was so rarely impatient with her
+that Sheila set her lips a moment before venturing
+further.  "Well, you know, she <i>is</i> extraordinarily
+attractive."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is she?  I don't see it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Isn't that, perhaps, because&mdash;you won't see it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sheila!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dearest&mdash;I'm sorry.  But surely he must know
+her better than we do, because&mdash;he cares.  And you
+don't give her a chance if you shut your heart against
+her.  It's so unlike you.  And it will be very hard
+on Mark ... if she&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, child, be quiet!"  Championship from this
+quarter was intolerable; and setting her hands on
+the girl's shoulders she gave them a gentle shake.
+"There's no call to waste any of your sweet pity on
+Mark.  If he speaks to-day&mdash;and I have a horrid
+feeling he will&mdash;<i>she's</i> not likely to refuse him.  And
+that's all he cares about at the moment.  I'm not
+being unjust to him, dear.  I'm facing the truth;
+which is sometimes quite as difficult as facing cannon.
+But&mdash;well, I can't talk about it.  You talk, instead.
+You haven't told me half enough about India.  I've
+an idea&mdash;something happened out there.  Am I right?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl nodded, looking out seaward.  "I've been
+wanting to tell you and yet rather shirking it.  This
+one&mdash;hurt me a good deal."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Another</i> 'poor thing'?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes; badly poor.  What Mark would call a worm.
+The third in two and a half years!  I begin to be
+ashamed of myself!  And&mdash;a little afraid too."  She
+paused. "Mums, because I'm not a wobbler myself,
+will it always be the wobbling men who insist on
+clinging to me?  Shall I perhaps be driven by this
+troublesome law of opposites to choose between
+marrying some pitifully lovable 'poor thing' or&mdash;never
+marrying at all?  Not lively alternatives&mdash;are
+they?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Forsyth's hand slipped from the girl's shoulder
+to her waist.  "Darling, I hope it won't come to
+that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So do I.  Naturally I'd ... prefer to marry.
+I&mdash;" she hesitated and coloured a little&mdash;"I would
+feel desolate ... without children.  Am I very
+... premature?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Forsyth drew her close and kissed her warm cheek.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You're very woman," she said.  "And Fate may
+have better things in store for you than the most
+importunate wobbler of them all.  I hope you
+discouraged this last one more decisively than his
+predecessor."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila shook her head.  "I simply couldn't.
+They do tug badly at my heart-strings.  No denying it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I suppose that means he's still hanging on?  And
+hurting you every time he gives a fresh tug?  A fine
+exhibition of masculine selfishness!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mums, he doesn't realise it hurts.  And&mdash;he
+has so much against him: if you only knew&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, I <i>want</i> to know."  Pushing aside her manuscript
+she drew a low stool close to her chair, and
+Sheila settled down on it, with a small sigh of content.
+"Now tell me.  What has he against him?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Loneliness and poor health; and an ugly little
+desert station at the end of nowhere; and hating the
+country&mdash;and&mdash;and drink!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Darling!  You've outdone yourself this time!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila turned quickly.  "<i>Please</i> stop bothering
+about me, and be sorry for him.  You would be, if
+you'd seen him.  So worn and sallow; though he's
+barely thirty.  Clever&mdash;very.  Too many brains and
+too few convictions I used to tell him.  And then,
+there had been a girl&mdash;when he was home on his first
+leave.  She made violent friends with him: she drew
+him on till he lost his heart to her; only to find that
+she had deliberately used him as a stalking-horse for
+another man, who afterwards turned out to be
+married already.  He heard that she went off with
+him in spite of it, but <i>that</i> he can't believe.  A dismal
+tale, isn't it?  The trouble was he couldn't stop
+loving her, even though he knew she was worthless&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Until he found in my beautiful Sheila the privileged
+bit of sticking-plaster to mend his heart!"  Lady
+Forsyth interrupted her with a touch of heat.
+"I wonder he had the face to tell you&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He didn't tell me till I'd refused him&mdash;twice.
+Then we had a long talk and he poured out all his
+bottled-up miseries.  And I wasn't <i>only</i> a bit of
+sticking-plaster.  He'd stopped loving her long ago.
+Do be fair to him, dearest.  You're in a wicked mood
+to-day!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I've never been in a worse.  And the tale of
+your latest 'poor thing' isn't exactly a specific for
+the blues!  How about the drinking?  And what was
+the final understanding, after refusals followed by
+confidences?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The hand that rested on her knee moved in a slow,
+soothing caress.  "I'm afraid you won't approve.
+Ralph didn't.  But I overruled him.  He&mdash;Mr. Seldon&mdash;begged
+me so hard not to throw him over
+altogether that I said he might write once a month.
+And the thing that arrives is more like an intimate
+diary than a letter.  He can write, Mums.  And he
+isn't drinking&mdash;like he was.  That was part of the
+compact.  It began in a bad cholera season: no one
+to notice; no one to care.  He says the average man
+never realises, till he has to spend months alone, that
+what he calls the voice of his conscience is much more
+often the voice of other people's!  So now&mdash;I'm his
+'other people'!  He gave me his word and he writes
+quite honestly about it.  If ever he really slips back
+again he says he'll stop writing and chuck
+everything.&mdash;There!  That's my poor little tale; I'm happier
+now it's out.  You may scold me; but you'd have
+done just the same yourself!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For answer, Lady Forsyth put both arms round her
+and kissed her fervently.  "Be as angelic as you
+please to your poor things, darling," she said.  "But
+for heaven's sake don't marry them."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I couldn't," Sheila answered softly.  "I'd sooner&mdash;go
+without."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the silence that followed Lady Forsyth felt as
+if the girl must hear her vehement thoughts.  But
+very soon Sheila spoke again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I told Mr. Seldon about our little colony of arts
+and crafts, and he is ever so interested.  He says
+machinery's gaining ground fearfully fast in India;
+cheapening and speeding up everything and killing
+the craftsman's joy in his work, just as it's done over
+here.  I had a letter yesterday.  He enclosed some
+Indian designs for carving.  I <i>must</i> show you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She ran off to fetch them; and thenceforward
+"shop" banished every subject from the field.  They
+were still at it when the gong sounded for lunch, and
+half the interminable day was gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lunch would be rather an effort.  Helen's eager
+interest in the panorama of life made it a matter of
+course that she should lead the talk at table, and she
+was in no mood for it to-day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To her relief, she found herself spared the trouble.
+Keith, who had an uncanny knack of divining her
+needs, came in armed with a book that had arrived
+by the second post and made havoc of his morning's
+work.  His feigned inability to part with it was
+obviously an excuse to make it the main topic of the
+meal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Calls itself an Essay on the <i>Confusion of the Arts</i>,"
+he said, placing a spare knife between the leaves.
+"I ordered it for Mark on Stoddard's
+recommendation.  But I'm inclined to think it really belongs
+to you.  The writer upholds so many of your pet
+convictions.&mdash;Listen here."  The knife was removed.
+"'Of course the present movement may continue
+indefinitely; we may have ideas of education still
+more undisciplinary; a still more pathological
+outpouring of fiction;...  In short, the dehumanizing
+of life and literature may go on for ever.  But we
+should not count upon it.  Reactions have been
+known to occur, and they have occasionally been
+sudden.  The world may even now be threatened
+with a subliminal uprush of common sense, however
+disconcerting the prospect may be to Mr. Bernard
+Shaw and his followers.  But prophecy is vain.
+Everything depends on leadership; and one can never
+tell whether the right persons will take the trouble
+to be born!'"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"One only knows they are notoriously lazy in that
+respect!"  Lady Forsyth struck in with a chuckle of
+appreciation.  "I like your new friend.  Any more
+gems of that quality?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Several.  Ah&mdash;here we are.  Don't you seem to
+recognise your own voice?  'Any one who makes a
+stand for vital and humane concentration is set down
+as a mere laggard or reactionary, whereas he may find
+himself, rather, a pioneer and leader of a forlorn
+hope&mdash;not all forlorn....  The revival of broad, vigorous,
+masculine distinctions between art and art alone can
+save us from the confusions that have crept into
+modern life and literature, and which I trace to two main
+sources&mdash;emotional unrestraint and pseudo-science....
+To set colour above design, illusion above
+informing purpose, suggestion above symmetry, is to
+set the feminine virtues above the masculine&mdash;and
+that has been the chief cause of the corruption of
+art and literature in the past century.'"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An indictment so sweeping roused Mona, fresh
+from her Oxford triumphs.  "But, Mr. Macnair,
+I call that heresy!" she protested; and Keith smiled
+indulgently at her unusual warmth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Heresy, my dear young lady, is, after all, only
+the truth as seen by the fellow in the opposite camp.
+And there still remain certain unregenerates in the
+other camp who are praying for the rediscovery of
+Man."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Or a German invasion!" murmured Lady Forsyth.
+"With apologies to Mona, I'm afraid nothing milder
+will save us from the petticoat peril!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At that Ralph looked up from his mayonnaise.
+In a wilderness of abstractions, here was something
+he could understand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I say, Lady Forsyth!  Rather a costly form of
+salvation, don't you think?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Salvation is always costly, Ralph," she answered
+him gravely.  "And it is always worth the price paid."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here Mona struck in again; and the argument, as
+Keith had intended, carried them well through lunch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The meal over they adjourned to the shade of
+three ancient pines on the terrace; but very soon
+Ralph, who was frankly bored, persuaded Mona to
+come out on the loch, and Keith's contentment was
+complete.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The new book lasted them till tea-time.  Then as
+none of the wanderers reappeared, he was persuaded
+to fetch his translations and read them to the
+audience of two for whom they had probably been
+written, if the truth were known.  It was sometimes
+said of Macnair that men delighted in his lectures
+almost as much for the quality of his voice as for the
+lucidity of his thought: and to-day, when instrument
+and music were in perfect accord, the effect on Helen's
+troubled, sensitive spirit was all that he could have
+desired.  She possessed in full measure the artist's
+gift of surrender to a mood.  Sheer beauty of thought
+and language, serene and splendid harmonies, drawn
+from the discords of life, stirred her like organ music;
+and for Keith her abstracted silence was the
+quintessence of praise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly, round a bend of the loch, a white sail
+dipped into view:&mdash;and the spell was broken.  Keith
+who had seen it also, still read on; but he no longer
+had the ear of her spirit.  She was simply listening
+for the sound of Mark's footstep&mdash;and another.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To her relief, the scrunch of gravel, when it came,
+plainly bespoke masculine boots.  Then the two
+men appeared round the corner of the house, and
+Mark waved his stick.  Bobs, who had been left at
+home, flung himself headlong on his recovered master
+with little sobbing squeals of joy, and, for one wild
+moment, hope revived in Helen's heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, you three look jolly comfortable there,"
+Mark greeted them, as he came up; and it was Keith
+who answered him.  His mother seemed to be looking
+for her scissors.  One glance at his face had sufficed.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0105"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER V
+</h3>
+
+<p class="intro">
+"Of love it may be said, the more unearthly, the more
+invisible."&mdash;HARDY.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+The first moment that escape was decently possible,
+Lady Forsyth left the group under the pines and went
+straight to her bedroom.  Mark would follow her,
+of course, but she had desperate need of a few minutes'
+breathing space.  She knew now that what Keith
+called "the brave old wisdom of acceptance" was
+still far from her; that she had not really faced the
+truth till she saw it in Mark's eyes.  And while her
+pulses still throbbed unevenly his voice sounded at
+the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mother, can I come in?" he asked; and the
+next moment stood before her&mdash;a glowing embodiment
+of victory.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Congratulate me, Mums," he said.  "I've brought
+off the great event with honours.  Miss Alison&mdash;Bel
+has promised to be my wife."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I know.  I have known it&mdash;all day," she
+answered him, with a brave attempt at a smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"More than I have!  Hadn't the cheek to count
+on her.  It was rather sharp work, and I'm not what
+you might call a fascinating chap.  But I simply
+couldn't wait.  It's the most amazing luck&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He broke off as if he had come into actual collision
+with her thought.  For nearly half a minute she
+endured the challenging scrutiny of his gaze.  Then:
+"Mother, what's up?" he asked, in a changed voice.
+"Aren't you going to congratulate me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She drew in a steadying breath.  He had given
+her a cue that made plain speaking a shade less difficult.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My darling boy," she said quietly, "I've never
+played at pretences with you and I can't do it now.
+You admit this has been sharp work.  And, honestly,
+I wish you had waited.  I should have thought
+better of your judgment and the quality of&mdash;your love."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He frowned sharply.  "Oh Lord, I didn't come
+here for a preachment.  The last thing one would
+expect from you.  I suppose it means you've taken
+one of your prejudices against her."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dear, I don't <i>know</i> her yet.  No more do you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, anyway, I love her.  Strikes me that's the
+straightest road to knowledge.  And as she loves
+me&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did she tell you so, Mark&mdash;quite unmistakably?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, of course," he retorted with rising temper;
+and was suddenly confronted by the realisation that
+Bel had done nothing of the kind.  The discovery
+made him angrier than ever; but there was no
+untruthfulness in him.  "I don't know about
+unmistakably.  You don't expect a girl to make passionate
+declarations.  Isn't the fact of her accepting me
+proof enough for any one?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Is</i> it?"  Lady Forsyth had herself in hand now,
+and she could not forego her one chance of candour
+even while she perceived the futility of reasoning
+with a man in his exalted state.  "Don't you realise
+that, in your case, there are ... other factors?
+Your position, your title..."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My&mdash;?  Great Scott!"  He stood speechless.
+The thing had simply not occurred to him.  Title
+and position were, for him, as much a matter of
+course as the hair on his head.  Then, as surprise
+subsided, anger flared up again.  "Upon my soul,
+Mother, I don't know what's come to you.  One
+would hardly think it was from you I'd learnt to
+credit people with the best motives.  Are you
+trying to insinuate that she may have fooled me?
+Accepted all my worldly goods under a pretence of
+caring&mdash;&mdash;?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No: not pretence," she interrupted, with a flash
+of impatience.  "How can I make myself clear to
+you if you won't let me finish a sentence?  I meant
+that your sudden infatuation&mdash;I can call it nothing
+else&mdash;might very well turn any girl's head and tempt
+her to imagine herself in love with you when she is
+really in love with the whole thing&mdash;flattered&mdash;attracted&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mother, be quiet!  I <i>will</i> not hear you!"  There
+was pain as well as anger in the cry.  "You don't
+understand her.  You won't try to understand her.
+You're simply jealous&mdash;prejudiced.  And I was
+counting on you&mdash;oh, confound it all&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He swung round on his heel and strode away from
+her that she might not see how deeply he was wounded
+by the failure of one who had never failed him yet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she, feeling suddenly exhausted, sank down
+on the sofa near which she had been standing; her
+lips compressed, her face strained and hard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The silence lasted little more than a minute; but
+to both it seemed interminable.  Their deep and
+real devotion had never been less apparent than now;
+yet, even in that antagonistic pause, each knew it
+unshaken, unshakable, by anything that either might
+say or do.  Hence its infinite capacity for inflicting
+pain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark remained standing by the window; and Lady
+Forsyth's answer, when it came, was addressed to
+the unpromising outline of his back and shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If you won't hear me, Mark, there is no more to
+be said.  It has been difficult enough to speak at
+all at such a moment&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then I wish to God you'd held your tongue,"
+he flashed round upon her.  "You haven't succeeded
+in shaking my faith&mdash;in her.  You've only taken the
+shine out of the happiest day of my life.  If that's
+any consolation to you!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Without giving her time to answer he swung out
+of the room; and the trivial fact that he refrained
+from slamming the door seemed cruelly to emphasise
+that his words had not been spoken in temper, but
+wrung from him by the bitterness of disappointment
+and hurt pride.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a time she remained as he had left her, sitting
+very still and upright, looking into vacancy.  Then
+she covered her face and bowed her head upon the
+carved end of the sofa.  But no tears came.  She
+would not suffer them.  She was still too angry with
+Fate, with Mark, and, above all, with the girl who
+had so transformed him.  And tears, after forty,
+hurt too poignantly to bring relief.  She was suffering,
+merely, and realising the power of those words,
+spoken by them both in the heat of the spirit, to
+disfigure the finer fabric of their lives.  Between
+two natures equally frank and fiery, lightning flashes
+of temper were inevitable; but never before had they
+revealed such threatening depths of division.  Worst
+of all, that division could not be hidden from others.
+The fact and the reason would be obvious to them
+all: a thought intolerable to her sensitive pride that
+shrank from scrutiny even of sympathetic eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And to-morrow&mdash;and to-morrow&mdash;&mdash;?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The ghost of a shiver ran through her.  Life with
+an estranged Mark and an unloved daughter-in-law
+was the last impossibility.  She was a fool to have
+spoken while the ardour and thrill of possession were
+so fresh upon him.  Yet, had she kept silence, he
+would eventually have forced the truth from her.
+It was the price of her proudest achievement; but
+it cannot be said that she paid it willingly&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this point her thoughts were checked by the
+sound of his footstep.  She might have known he
+would come.  Instantly she was on her feet: her
+heart too full of relief for any thought of what she
+should say.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Outside the door he paused&mdash;and she held her
+breath.  Then, very gently, he turned the handle
+and came in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The temper had gone out of his face but not the
+pain.  He came straight up to her and set both hands
+on her shoulders.  "Mother, I'm sorry," he said
+simply.  "I was a brute.  But one doesn't expect
+unfairness from you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Darling, it was clumsy of me&mdash;I didn't mean to
+be unfair," she answered, grasping his wrists.  "But
+it's always been the truth between us.  I couldn't
+insult you with empty insincerities."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And it didn't strike you that you were insulting
+<i>her</i>?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His fervent stress on the pronoun was indiscreet,
+to say the least of it, and Lady Forsyth winced
+visibly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mums, don't be a fool," he said, with gruff
+tenderness, gently pressing her down on to the sofa.
+"If you're going to start with being jealous&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's not jealousy, Mark."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then what the deuce is it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One thought sprang to both their minds, but
+neither could or would speak it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We've got to know where we stand about this
+business," Mark went on.  "If you're going to
+dislike and distrust her, the position's impossible.
+The trouble is, she suspects something of the
+sort.  But of course I told her it was all rot.
+Mother, you simply must be good to her.  She
+seems to have had a pretty rank time of it with her
+own people."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In what way?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"D'you really care to hear?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course I do, seeing how vitally her past
+concerns your future."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark grimaced indulgently.  "Can't you drop
+me and take a little decent interest in her?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll try&mdash;if you'll give me a chance!  What about
+her people, and this Miss O'Neill?  I've often wondered&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He told her, in clipped phrases, pacing to and fro,
+as his habit was when moved or trying to express his
+thoughts.  He seldom sat down except to eat or read;
+and always seemed most completely himself when
+squarely planted on his feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His version of Bel's very mixed experiences&mdash;glorified
+inevitably&mdash;failed to dispel his mother's instinctive
+sense of something lacking in the girl, precisely
+what, it was too soon to tell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Poor child!" she said, when he had finished.  "I
+wonder&mdash;how old is she?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark frowned.  "I haven't the remotest.  We
+didn't exchange birth certificates.  About
+five-and-twenty&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"More than that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, if she was forty it would make no earthly
+difference," he retorted.  "The point is&mdash;will you
+be decent to her, if it's only for my sake?  She doesn't
+seem ever to have had a home worth mentioning.
+I want her to feel she has a real one here."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She sighed and rose to her feet.  "Darling, I'll
+do my best."  A deep metallic sound vibrated through
+the house&mdash;"Good gracious!  There's dinner and
+I haven't changed."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Who cares?  You look awfully sweet in that blue
+thing.  Come along."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He slipped a hand through her arm and led her
+out on to the landing.  But at the head of the stairs
+he paused.  A vision of Sheila skimming down the
+lower flight reminded him sharply that there were
+others to be told.  There were also congratulations
+to be endured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I say, Mums, you might go ahead and break the
+ice," he said, giving her a gentle forward push.  "I
+feel most beastly shy of them all."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Shyness was the least part of her own acute
+discomfort; but the obedience of a wife is as nothing to
+that of a well-trained mother.  So she went before
+to do his bidding; and, being a mother, she would
+not have had it otherwise.  Indeed the boyish request,
+following upon his casual compliment, seemed to
+bring her nearer to him than she had felt for days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But in spite of her good services, Mark found
+dinner, flavoured with discreet congratulations, a
+singularly unappetising meal.  His mother's doubtful
+attitude worried him more than he cared to confess.
+Amongst the others also, he felt&mdash;or imagined&mdash;a
+lack of genuine sympathy in the air; and the obvious
+word "congratulation" was conspicuous by its
+absence.  Pure accident, no doubt; but it jarred.
+Of a sudden he felt vaguely "out of it," and more
+than a little aggrieved that his happiness&mdash;which
+should have added the perfecting touch to their
+summer party&mdash;seemed instead to have put things
+indefinably out of gear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Matters were not much better in the drawing-room
+after dinner&mdash;the friendliest hour of the day at
+Inveraig.  Keith took up a book.  Lady Forsyth
+obliterated herself behind the <i>Times</i>; and Sheila, soon
+after the men came in, slipped quietly out of the room.
+Ralph, kicking his heels on the window-seat,
+proposed Bridge.  Mark refused without ceremony;
+and Maurice proceeded to monopolise Miss Videlle,
+by way of reward for duty done.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark, in his highly strung mood, felt unjustifiably
+annoyed with them all, and the more he suspected
+their lack of sympathy the more his chivalrous nature
+swerved towards Bel.  He gave it up at last and
+decided to go to The Rowans.  There at least he would
+be welcome and could talk naturally.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm going for a stroll, Mother," he announced to
+the vast expanse of the <i>Times</i>.  "Leave something
+unlocked if I'm late."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wondered&mdash;would Keith offer to accompany
+him?  But Keith made no move.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the hall his happy impulse was checked by the
+recollection of Harry&mdash;probably antagonistic and
+quite certain to speak her mind without reserve.
+His unexpected appearance might only make things
+difficult for Bel.  He felt checked at every turn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh damn it all!" he muttered aloud, and in the
+same breath caught sight of Sheila coming slowly
+downstairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The light falling on her from above burnished the
+outward sweeping waves of her dark hair, made
+shadowed mysteries of her eyes, and luminously
+caressed the curves of her face, that, like her voice,
+was at once clear-cut and soft.  Her high-waisted,
+silver-grey gown added a cubit to her stature; and
+Mark, watching her unperceived, was smitten afresh
+by her natural wild-flower grace, the very antithesis of
+Bel's more exotic charm.  Seen thus, Sheila looked no
+less than beautiful; but Mark's mind, just then, was
+concentrated on Bel.  If only he could enlist Sheila's
+championship, the girl would have twice the chance
+with his mother.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Straightway he resolved on a direct appeal, and
+going quickly forward, planted himself on the mat,
+one hand grasping the balustrade.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She started and came to a standstill two steps
+above him, so that their eyes were almost level.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What is it?  Mums wanting me?" she asked, and
+he thought she looked paler than usual, but perhaps
+it was only the light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No.  <i>I</i> am though," he said, with his usual
+directness.  "Are you frightfully busy?  Or frightfully
+bored with me and my engagement?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Neither," she answered, a smile flickering in her
+eyes.  "Why?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, the rest seem to be.  And mother was
+quite upset.  I had no end of a scene with her."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Poor darling!" Sheila murmured distressfully,
+and Mark made a whimsical grimace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Which?  Her or me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her pallor vanished.  "Mums, of course.  Still,
+I'm sorry all round.  It'll spoil things for you both."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Rather!  But I'm thinking you could do a deal
+to smooth matters, Sheila&mdash;if you choose.  It's Bel,
+I'm bothered about.  I want you all to make her
+feel welcome.  And things don't look promising so
+far.  Come out for a stroll, will you!  I've a lot to
+say."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'd love to."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stood back to make way for her, and as she
+reached his side his hand closed lightly on her arm.
+"Sure you'll be warm enough in this?" he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She nodded and went rather quickly on before him
+into the garden.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Avoiding the terrace, they turned into a coppice
+of birch and pine, and so passed out on to an open
+stretch of heather, duskily purple and bronze in the
+fading light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark did most of the talking, and&mdash;in the repetition
+of her story to more sympathetic ears&mdash;Bel shone
+out with fresh lustre as the heroine of a plucky, if
+somewhat erratic, fight against the tyranny of
+circumstance and unfavourable early surroundings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila listened to it all in her quietly intent fashion
+that was balm to the excitable natures of both mother
+and son.  She had the true gift for listening, which
+is even rarer than the gift of speech; and for Mark
+her silence had a quality of its own.  It was a living
+thing, alert and aware.  When a man felt worried
+it seemed to distil a sympathy that called for no
+embarrassing response.  And her brief contributions
+to their talk were more than satisfactory.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of course she would love his Bel as a sister, and
+"Mums" would be sure to come round in time.  To
+doubt it were a poor compliment to Bel, she reminded
+him; and he wondered how he had overlooked that
+obvious truth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Only once she spoke of herself.  "You know, I'm
+afraid," she said, "however well things turn out,
+Mums will never quite be able to put her in my place.
+And I'm also afraid...," she hesitated and looked
+up at him, "that I wouldn't have it otherwise."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No more would I," he agreed, with sudden fervour.
+"You belong&mdash;to us both.  And you always
+will."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When, at length, darkness and falling dew drove
+them in, she had charmed him completely from his
+mood of vague doubt and irritation.  But for the
+new name on his lips, and the stir of excitement in
+his veins, it was almost as if they were the Mark and
+Sheila of a month ago: almost&mdash;but not quite.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the hall he held out his hand.  "I'd rather not
+go in there again.  Tell them I haven't gone out,
+will you?"  He paused.  "I'm a rotten hand at
+saying things, Sheila.  But, somehow, you've made
+everything look different.  And you'll square mother
+all right.  I can trust you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He grasped her hand harder than he realised;
+but she bore it without wincing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, Mark," she said, "you can trust me.  I'll
+do my very best."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And none knew better than he the measure of her
+very best.  He ran upstairs with a lighter heart.
+One could rely on Sheila, though the heavens fell;
+and his doubts&mdash;as she had said&mdash;were an injustice
+to Bel, who would probably twist them all&mdash;including
+his mother&mdash;round her little finger, once she set
+herself to the task.  His last thought was of their
+meeting on the morrow.  But it was Sheila's face,
+softly radiant in the lamplight, that perversely
+haunted his dreams.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0106"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER VI
+</h3>
+
+<p class="intro2">
+  "Where beauty's veil doth cover every blot,<br>
+  And all things turn to fair that eyes can see!...<br>
+  Both grace and faults are loved of more and less:<br>
+  Thou makest faults graces that to thee resort."<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;SHAKESPEARE.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Mark stepped back from his modelling pedestal and
+critically surveyed the result of his morning's work&mdash;a
+terra-cotta study of Contemplation, inspired by
+his vision of Bel under the birch-tree on that day
+of very mixed memories which seemed infinitely
+more than two weeks ago.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The small statue, classic in its serenity and simplicity
+of treatment, was a perfect thing of its kind;
+as unlike the bulk of Mark's rugged, individual
+studies as Bel's whole attitude to life was unlike his
+own.  Every line of it rested the eye, even as the
+girl's cool deliberate nature rested his own ceaselessly
+questing brain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So far he had found no trace in her of the hidden
+conflict between spirit and matter that was the keynote
+of his art.  Already he recognised her spasmodic
+rebellions rather as a series of skilful evasions that
+implied no deep questioning of life or desire of
+knowledge.  She was not a genuine rebel, like Miss
+O'Neill.  Almost he suspected her of being an
+impressionist in life.  But doubts and discoveries
+notwithstanding, the charm still held, and would probably
+continue to hold&mdash;irrespective of anything that
+she might be or do.  Incidentally, she was proving
+herself an admirable model.  This was the third
+morning he had victimised her, and she was still
+enduring it with the patience of a Griselda; still
+sitting, as she had sat for a good hour, on a long
+low stool at the far end of the room, in a blue wrapper
+with falling sleeves that revealed her arms.  Elbows
+on knees, chin cradled in her hand&mdash;was she thinking,
+dreaming, or mildly bored?  He would have
+asked her had they been alone.  But Lenox was
+ensconced in the deep window-seat behind him,
+working at a post-impressionist pastel&mdash;a challenge
+to Mark's insistence on the classic note.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Tired&mdash;are you?" he asked instead; and she
+gave him a sidelong glance with the slow lift of her
+lashes that still stirred him, though he knew it now
+for a conscious trick of manner.  "Could you hang
+on for another fifteen minutes without a serious
+collapse?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I could&mdash;just; if I may have a cigarette directly
+it's over."  Mark, as well she knew, held ridiculously
+old-fashioned opinions on that subject, and a cigarette
+just before lunch was the depth of demoralisation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I call that taking a mean advantage," he reproved
+her without severity.  "But I admit you've earned it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A very sustaining admission!  And the prospect
+of getting it is more sustaining still."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her cool, provocative smile made him confound
+Lenox for being present, which was precisely what
+she intended.  Then, with a sigh of resignation she,
+so to speak, absented herself, and her gaze reverted
+to a large and vigorous bas-relief that occupied the
+centre of a deep wall-shelf right before her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a recent achievement; a thing of signal
+beauty and power, as magnificently impetuous as
+the figure on the table was gracious and controlled.
+It portrayed the death of a Viking self-immolated
+on the deck of his blazing barque in a storm off the
+coast of Norway.  In the background, the savage
+peaks of the mainland were roughly indicated.  The
+rest was a whirl of wind-battered clouds and waters,
+scrolls of smoke and twisted blades of fire that
+wreathed and devoured the doomed ship.  Her prow,
+a Valkyrie with winged helmet and lifted spear, rode
+high on the crest of a wave, poised, as it were, for the
+flight to Valhalla when her hero on the sloping deck
+should have finished his last fight.  And it was not
+finished yet.  Raised on one elbow, his head flung
+upward, his long locks, beard, and eyebrows were
+blown abroad by the wind.  He seemed less to be
+awaiting the stroke of death, than rejoicing in the
+majestic duel between the gods of fire and storm.
+Though dwarfed by his mighty surroundings, that
+dying fragment of flesh and bone and sinew dominated
+all&mdash;a serene and splendid figure of defiance; a
+symbol, finely conceived and wrought, of the unconquering
+yet unconquered spirit of man.  That, for Mark,
+had been the inner significance of his theme, above
+and beyond his sheer joy in the swirl of the tempest,
+with one quenchless spark of human will and courage
+for the point of stillness in the midst.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For days, while working at it, he had scarcely been
+off his feet or sat down to a meal, and his final spurt
+of inspiration had kept him going from breakfast-time
+one day till four o'clock next morning.  The
+thing was unquestionably his finest achievement yet.
+He had put more of himself into it than into any
+work of his hands; and he wondered, now, whether
+Bel was seeing it merely as a vigorous bit of drama, or
+feeling it, understanding it, as every artist craves
+that his work should be felt and understood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had made few comments when first he showed
+her his studio, his inner self, except that she had not
+realised she was going to marry a genius and she
+hoped he was not one of the too uncomfortable kind.
+He had promptly reassured her by waiving all claim
+to genius and promising not to be "uncomfortable"
+if he could possibly avoid it.  A faint, very faint,
+twinge at his heart had been loyally ignored; and
+before long she had charmed him&mdash;almost&mdash;into
+forgetfulness that it had ever been there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still, it could not be said that they made swift
+progress in intimacy.  One day she would seem
+exquisitely near him, and the next would slip
+distractingly out of reach.  At first this had puzzled him.
+Then he suspected it of being deliberate; and
+suspicion was tinged with resentment.  He neither
+understood nor appreciated the feline element
+inherent in certain women.  Nor did he relish the
+suspicion that at times Bel could, and did, play upon
+him, as a skilled musician plays upon an instrument;
+that she could even exasperate him to the point of
+fury without losing an iota of her charm.  That
+charm she was at small pains to exercise on the other
+members of the household, except in the case of
+Maurice and Ralph.  With them it was instinctive,
+simply; with the rest it would have been something
+of an effort, which apparently was not worth making.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As regards Lady Forsyth&mdash;though Sheila had been
+better than her word&mdash;things did not, so far, look
+promising.  Just at first, for Mark's sake, the two
+had made a genuine effort at friendliness; but on
+both sides the effort was so much more in evidence
+than the friendliness that they very soon found
+themselves tacitly avoiding any attempt at intimate
+talk...  For this unhappy state of things Mark, not
+unnaturally, blamed his mother rather than Bel.
+She, after all, was the older woman.  A convincing
+lead from her might have worked wonders; but the
+very sincerity he had always so loved in her had now
+become a stone of stumbling.  That he could
+understand, being cast in the same mould.  What he
+secretly resented was her blindness&mdash;wilful or
+otherwise&mdash;to Bel's charm; to the sweetness and goodness
+in her that would only, he fancied, blossom freely in
+an atmosphere of sympathetic appreciation, his
+mother's most notable gift.  How deeply he had
+counted on this, he now began to realise; but for
+fear of hurting her and making matters worse, he
+bridled his tongue, with the result that he, too,
+found himself avoiding occasions for personal talk.
+His people, it seemed, could not, or would not,
+assimilate Bel; while Bel's whole attitude politely
+implied that she was marrying him, not his people.
+But they three&mdash;his mother, Keith, and Sheila&mdash;were
+so closely linked with his main interest in
+life that it was hard to see how matters would range
+themselves when it came to the point of marriage.
+And he intended to marry soon.  An engagement
+was an unsatisfactory state of affairs, and there was
+nothing to wait for that he could see&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There!  The fifteen minutes is up," he said
+suddenly, consulting his watch and stepping back again
+for another critical survey.  "I won't keep you a
+second longer.  She shall have her finishing touches
+to-morrow."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bel rose, yawned, stretched herself gracefully at
+some length, and then stood smiling at him, hands
+clasped behind her head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Maurice&mdash;unnoticed by Mark, but not by Bel&mdash;took
+up a fresh piece of paper and began a lightning
+sketch of her pose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You're a model of a model!" Mark commended
+her warmly.  Then his gaze moved from her to the
+bas-relief, as if contrasting the two things he loved
+almost equally with two different sides of his nature.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Have you made friends with my Viking?" he
+asked, and she pursed her lips as if considering.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Frankly&mdash;I've tried to; but I can't.  The wind
+of him blows even one's thoughts about.  He's
+magnificent, of course.  But too stormy and
+uncomfortable for my taste; so uncomfortable that I
+was rather wondering how you could have enjoyed
+doing him?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark raised his eyebrows.  "That doesn't lend
+itself to explanation," he said lightly.  "Some sort
+of natural affinity, perhaps.  I'm a bit stormy and
+uncomfortable myself, in certain moods."  He opened
+his cigarette-case and held it out to her.  "I
+apologise for blowing your thoughts about.  We'll change
+your view to-morrow."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now you're angry!" she said sweetly, taking a
+cigarette and tapping it on the back of her hand.
+As she did so a half hoop of diamonds flashed into
+view.  "Honesty's not the best policy, let the
+copybooks never so virtuously rage!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I prefer it anyway," he said.  "Have a light."  He
+struck a match and held it for her.  "I hope my
+Lady of Dreams is more to your taste.  She's
+warranted not to stir the ghost of a breeze in any one's
+thought!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bel came forward now and contemplated herself
+with undisguised satisfaction.  "Mark, you <i>have</i>
+improved her.  She's lovely!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Naturally.  She can't help herself, bless her,"
+he said under his breath, for the pure pleasure of
+calling up a blush.  "Now then, Lenox," he added
+aloud, "have you the cheek to produce your
+caricature of my future wife?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Rather!"  Maurice promptly held up for
+inspection a curious blur of blues and greens, of pale
+gold hair and flesh tints of doubtful fleshliness.
+After some looking, the suggestion of a woman
+emerged; and later still, a ghostly suggestion of Bel.
+It was unquestionably clever&mdash;and nothing more.
+Mark laughed aloud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Call that a portrait!  By the yellow blob on the
+top one would just know which way to hang it!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mark, you're very rude!"  Bel waved him aside
+with her cigarette.  "It's queer and perverse; but
+<i>I</i> rather like it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Maurice sprang to his feet and executed a low bow.
+"Miss Alison, it is yours&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He broke off and straightened himself, for the door
+opened to admit Keith with the <i>Times</i> in his hand.
+"Your mother wants lunch at once," he said.  "I'm
+driving her into Ardmuir early on business.  Would
+you care to come?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thanks no.  We've a private picnic on, across
+the loch."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark glanced at the open sheet.  "Any fresh news?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A few more details about that Irish shooting
+affray; an ugly, ominous business.  While our precious
+politicians are hurling epithets at each other,
+things over there are rapidly drifting towards
+bloodshed on a big scale."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark's eyes flashed and he thrust out his chin.
+"If fighting's imminent, the sooner you and I pack
+our things and cross over to Belfast the better.  At
+least we can help to stiffen the ranks."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mark&mdash;you don't <i>mean</i> that?" Bel broke in, a
+touch of sharpness in her startled tone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Every word of it," he answered quietly, and
+Macnair's long mouth twisted as he looked from one
+to the other.  "I could name a dozen good fellows
+here who'd come with me like a shot."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But&mdash;what do <i>you</i> know about soldiering?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed.  "More than you think for.  I've
+been put through my paces in the O.T.C.  I can
+ride; I can flag-wag; and I'm a marksman, which
+is very much to the point.  You've not discovered
+all my talents yet by any means!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Bel was scarcely listening.  Her eyes were on
+Keith, whom already she recognised as an authority
+on most things, including Mark himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You're not really going, are you, Mr. Macnair?"
+she asked in a tone of faint dismay.  "The Government
+would surely never let it get as far as civil war."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Keith, more charmed than he cared to own,
+reassured her with his kindliest smile.  "I sincerely
+hope not, Miss Alison, for all our sakes.  This Austrian
+ultimatum to Serbia may very well set Europe ablaze;
+and at such a moment we should be worse than fools
+to start cutting each other's throats at home."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bel looked distinctly relieved.  In spite of her
+American phase, she remained essentially an islander.
+For her, Europe was a vast vague region across the
+Channel, chiefly represented by Paris and the Riviera.
+But with Mark it was otherwise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I say, Keith," he asked sharply.  "Is that Serbian
+business really going to make things buzz?  I've done
+no more than squint at headlines lately.  And we've
+had such a surfeit of 'Wolf, Wolf!' one gets a bit
+sceptical!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Keith smiled.  "When you can find time to 'squint'
+at two letters I've had from Vienna and Rome, you'll
+be sceptical no longer.  If Austria wrings the last
+humiliation from little Serbia, Russia will be in it;
+which means France will be in it too&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In <i>what</i>, Mr. Macnair?"  Bel's relief was swiftly
+evaporating.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The conflagration of Europe," Keith said gravely;
+and the plain statement sent an odd, uncomfortable
+thrill through them all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But we're not Europe.  It would not mean us?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Keith gave her a direct look.  "In my opinion,
+Miss Alison, we <i>are</i> Europe and it would mean us.
+Unless we recognise that obvious fact in time, we shall
+simply be marched over.  Whether our reigning
+politicians will take your view or mine, remains to
+be proved.&mdash;But there goes the gong.  And we must
+feed, though dynasties fall!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He hurried out and Maurice followed him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the door closed on them, Mark, in his silent,
+impetuous fashion, turned and took the girl in his
+arms.  "Poor darling!  Did I frighten her badly?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No.  You made her very angry!" she answered,
+in her most seductive voice; and for all apology he
+kissed her passionately.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It <i>will</i> be all right, won't it?" she questioned,
+still in her childlike vein.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"God knows.  I hope it will," he said.  "Anyway,
+if we are sitting on a live crater, we'll take our fill of
+peace and sunshine this afternoon.  Come along!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But at lunch there was more disturbing talk about
+Ireland.  Mark still spoke of going over if the
+tension snapped, though Bel had taken his caresses for
+a sign of grace.  Ralph clamoured to accompany him.
+Sheila threatened to beg, borrow, or steal a uniform
+and go with them.  As for Lady Forsyth she seemed
+as bad as any one.  A spot of colour in each cheek
+heightened the blue of her eyes.  She felt the whole
+tragic tangle of right and wrong keenly, vividly, as
+she felt everything, from a pin-prick to an earthquake
+in the antipodes; and, like all truly imaginative
+natures, she could sink the personal point of view
+when larger issues held the field.  Bel, very wisely,
+kept silence.  Anything she might have to say on the
+subject was for one ear alone.  Meantime, she
+privately reiterated her opinion that Lady Forsyth was
+an odd, uncomfortable sort of person, quite unworthy
+to be the mother of Mark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lunch ended, the "uncomfortable person" retreated
+to her turret-room to write a couple of notes
+before starting, and thither Mark followed her&mdash;an
+event so rare these days that she started when the
+door opened and he came in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mother," he plunged as usual, "the others were
+mostly joking at lunch.  But I meant what I said.
+Did you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked up quickly, and her eyes caressed his
+fine, strong face.  "Of course I did."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thought so.  You <i>are</i> a real sportswoman, Mums."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She sighed and smiled almost in one breath.  "A
+fair imitation!  I shall pray more fervently than ever
+for a peaceful solution.  Besides&mdash;" a tentative
+pause&mdash;"How about Bel?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>She'd</i> be all right.  Why shouldn't she?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the touch of sharpness in his tone betrayed
+him&mdash;and Bel also.  "You might credit her with a
+few good qualities.  She's got as many as most people
+if you'd honestly look for them.  But you won't."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dear, that's not true.  You might try and be
+fair to me.  I've done my best."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So has she, no doubt, though you probably haven't
+noticed it.  But it seems precious little use either
+way.  So the less said the better."  He swung round
+and took a step toward the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, Mark!" she murmured, and checked herself.
+He was right.  Words only widened the breach.
+But the low sound brought him back to her side.
+"Mums," he said, a hand on her shoulder, "is this
+rotten state of things always going on between us?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I hope not."  She laid her fingers over his.
+"'My faith is large in time.'  We two impatient
+folk must manage to have patience with each other.
+The trouble is&mdash;forgive me, dear&mdash;I can find so
+little in her to take hold of.  It's rather like trying
+to grasp a cloud.  Later on I may arrive at the
+substance that must be there!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, it's <i>there</i> right enough."  Mark's tone was
+curiously quiet, considering how she had dared.  "Are
+you yet convinced, Mother, that she cares, or do you
+still believe she's marrying my title and possessions?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Forsyth started.  "Have you any doubt yourself?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If I have, it's all your fault.  What d'you really
+think?  Tell me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I think she cares more now than she did at first,
+though not nearly so much as she ought to before she
+becomes your wife.  You've won her, nominally,
+by the primitive process of snatching.  But you've
+yet to win her actually.  So don't be in a hurry to
+snatch at marriage.  You're still comparative strangers.
+Give yourselves a year at least."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh Lord!" he groaned, "I was thinking of Christmas.
+I'm blest if I could keep it up for a year."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Keep up&mdash;what?" she asked, amused and amazed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh&mdash;you know!" he flung out an expressive hand.
+"This lovering business.  I'm not much of a hand
+at the sentimental touch.  Little compliments and
+attentions and all that.  <i>Your</i> fault again!  You
+haven't reared me that way.  Mind you, it's not that
+I don't care&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course not!"  Her amusement was full of
+understanding.  "It's only that you're even more of
+a Scot than I thought you were!  Poor Bel!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not a bit of it!" he retorted; but that first touch
+of sympathy pleased him.  "I believe I'm improving.
+But&mdash;after marriage, she wouldn't expect so
+much&mdash;eh?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She might&mdash;and she might not.  Women mostly
+do.  And when they marry the non-lovering type of
+Scot&mdash;they suffer.  A friend of mine&mdash;an Irishwoman
+and childless&mdash;was so completely withered by ten
+years of life with a dour and devoted Scottish
+husband that she simply had to leave him, and to this
+day he doesn't understand why."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hurry up, Helen!  What's come to you?" Keith's
+voice rang out from the stairs; and Lady Forsyth
+leapt to her feet.  "Bad boy to delay me like this!
+But do give yourself time to get your hand in.  Promise."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He smiled at her characteristic urgency.  She
+looked ridiculously, engagingly young, he thought,
+in her blue motor bonnet with its long veil floating
+over her shoulder, and the eyes that answered his
+smile were suspiciously bright.  Obeying a rare
+impulse, he stooped and kissed them.  "Well&mdash;just
+to please you," he said, "I'll try and hang on till
+Easter."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Bless you!" she whispered.  Then she waved to
+him from the threshold and was gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For several minutes he stood there looking round
+the familiar room&mdash;that still seemed alive with her
+presence&mdash;in a very mixed frame of mind.  It was
+puzzling, and it hardly seemed right somehow; but
+the fact remained that, even now, this vivid, virile
+little mother of his was easily the biggest thing in
+his life.  To please her he had promised to wait till
+Easter.  Rather an unflattering discrepancy, when
+you came to think of it, between nine months'
+engagement and his original proposal to marry in a
+week.  And, with a sudden twinge of compunction,
+he hurried out in search of Bel.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0107"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER VII
+</h3>
+
+<p class="intro2">
+  "Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won,<br>
+  Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailéd;<br>
+  And when a woman woos, what woman's son<br>
+  Will sourly leave her till she have prevailéd?"<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;SHAKESPEARE.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+That picnic on the farther shore of the loch marked
+a definite step in the progress of their intimacy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bel, in a distinctly coming-on disposition, proved
+herself at once a more enchanting and disturbing
+possession than Mark had found her hitherto.  First
+she must discover a hollow full of bracken for his
+"arm-chair"; then she must take possession of the
+tea-basket and proceed to "play at being married"
+with all the airy innocence of nineteen.  But nineteen
+never could have worked so simply yet skilfully
+on a man's heartstrings that, before their idyllic meal
+was over, the man in question found himself more
+than half regretting that promise to his mother.  It
+was almost as if Bel had guessed at his defection and
+set out to punish him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When tea was over he proffered his cigarette case.
+"More demoralisation, I suppose?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No; the reward of virtue!" she said, deftly extracting
+one with each hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I say!  Sheer greed!  What about virtue being
+its own reward?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wrinkled her nose very prettily.  "Can't say
+I've ever found it so.  But then&mdash;I'm not overburdened
+with virtue.  So I'm entitled to the reward!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not in that form.  You're my wife this afternoon!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So you can be as hectoring as you please?  At
+that rate I vote we remain engaged to the end of the
+chapter!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Bel&mdash;if you talk like that, I'll marry you
+to-morrow," he threatened her, tempted beyond
+endurance; but she was gravely considering her two
+cigarettes.  Then, lifting her lashes, she regarded him
+with lazy tenderness.  "I'll be very good," she said,
+"and give up one of them in exchange&mdash;for a kiss!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus challenged he seized her and kissed her
+vehemently&mdash;lips, eyes, and hair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh&mdash;oh!" she breathed, half in ecstasy, half in
+remonstrance; and he desisted without releasing her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You brought it on yourself," he said huskily.
+"Bel&mdash;you're a witch.  You <i>do</i> know how to make
+a man crazy for you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her sigh expressed contentment unabashed.  But
+she seemed chiefly concerned with the cigarette in
+her left hand.  It was crumpled into a limp wreck.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There now, you've killed the poor thing," she
+said, holding it up for his inspection.  "And I might
+just as well have enjoyed it.  Do look at Bobs over
+there, disapproving visibly of your behaviour."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark looked; and the Irish terrier's stump of a
+tail moved to and fro in small jerks.  The rest of him
+remained motionless, watchful, nose between paws,
+obviously prepared for active intervention, if need
+arose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good old Bobs!" murmured Mark; and two
+velvet ears, several shades darker than the chestnut
+head, twitched in response, as who should say: "I
+appreciate the attention, but we can't enjoy ourselves
+properly till we're rid of her."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bel snapped her fingers in friendly invitation.
+But he paid no heed.  "He's quite uncomfortably
+human, that dog, and he hasn't accepted me yet.
+He's a jealous red-head, like his master&mdash;almost as
+jealous as his master's mother!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why do you think she's jealous?" Mark asked,
+instinctively on the defensive at the mention of her
+name.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't think.  I know.  It's quite natural.  I
+should be horribly jealous&mdash;of my son."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You would&mdash;would you?" he asked in a changed
+voice; and she, resting her head against him, answered
+nothing.  Possibly she thought the allusion might
+induce him to speak more definitely of their marriage;
+but he merely continued to hold her, more gently
+now, and to stroke her ruffled hair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For several minutes they remained thus, thinking
+their own curiously divergent thoughts.  Then by
+degrees she drew herself away, laid the crumpled
+cigarette on his knee and put the other between her
+lips.  "Light, please," she said, and as he held the
+match for her, she looked searchingly into his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Bel&mdash;" he began vehemently; but she checked
+him with a gesture.  "Pax!  I want to enjoy my
+cigarette unmolested.  Tell me more about the
+Hampshire home.  I've heard next to nothing about
+it yet."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She settled herself to listen, hands lightly clasped
+round her knees, her eyes gazing dreamily out over
+the water.  Like all women who pose habitually and
+instinctively, she had the art of seeming more natural
+than genuine simplicity can ever appear.  And she
+had touched the right spring.  If Mark loved any
+place in the world better than Inveraig, it was
+Wynchcombe Friars.  His feeling for both was too personal,
+too deep-seated to be articulate; but he could at
+least describe externals; and he did it well.  He told
+her of the long, rambling Elizabethan house, with its
+oak panelling and dark roof beams; of the great
+flagged terrace, flanked by moss-covered urns,
+overlooking a forest of Scotch firs that trooped down into
+the valley and climbed the opposite ridge in massed
+battalions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Outside my bedroom and studio windows," he
+said, "there's a very sea of pine tops, sinking into
+the hollow and rising again till they are splashed like
+dark foam against the sky.  Magnificent trees.  Most
+of 'em hundreds of years old.  And the charm of it
+is that, on the other side of our ridge, behind the
+house, we drop down into typical English country:
+meadows and park land, and the Wynch flowing lazily
+through it; great lonely beeches and oaks, with all
+space to spread themselves in, and the grand old
+ruins of Wynchcombe Abbey.  You'll simply love it.
+I'm longing to take you all over it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm longing too.  It sounds very beautiful," she
+said with feeling; then paused, as if picturing the
+scene.  But her feminine brain was revolving matters
+more practical than pine forests and ruined abbeys.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Horses to ride?" she asked casually.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes; and to drive.  We're not motor-folk really.
+But mother succumbed to one at last for long distances."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm glad.  I love motoring.  Are you within
+reasonable distance of town?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Seven miles from a branch line station and bad
+connections.  We usually motor to the main line
+thirteen miles off.  But we're not great Londoners,
+either of us.  We've too much that's keenly interesting
+on the spot."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Rather narrowing, isn't it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I haven't found it so."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again she was silent, contemplating the blurred
+beauty of inverted hills in the loch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And Wynchcombe Friars," she asked, "would
+be our main residence?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well&mdash;where else?" he said, smiling at her pensive
+profile and wondering what she was driving at.
+"There's only this, besides.  This is mother's little
+place&mdash;a legacy from a bachelor godfather.  I don't
+run to half a dozen establishments."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But surely"&mdash;she turned to him now, half eager,
+half anxious&mdash;"surely you have a house in town?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Rather not.  Don't want it, and couldn't afford
+it.  I'm not a cocoa or a patent medicine millionaire.
+Keeping up two estates&mdash;though Inveraig is not
+large&mdash;takes a fair amount of money.  And I've put a
+good deal into our arts and crafts centre."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her face fell so noticeably that he slipped a
+consoling hand through her arm.  "Poor little girl!
+Is it a house in town she's after?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, naturally I"&mdash;she coloured a little&mdash;"I
+thought&mdash;you kind of people always went the regular
+round&mdash;London, Scotland, and the country."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So we do; the social sort.  Mother and I aren't
+the social sort.  I didn't suppose you were either."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I haven't had half a chance.  But I'd like to be.
+A flat wouldn't ruin you, would it, Mark?  Just for
+the season."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This time it was his face that fell.  "Oh Lord!
+I could never stick out a London season, Bel.  The
+very best time in the country too."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And <i>I</i> could never exist all the year round out
+of town."  She stated the fact sweetly but with
+entire conviction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hang it all!  This is rather a serious state of
+affairs!" he said, with a lightness he was far from
+feeling.  "We must see if we can't effect a compromise."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly he remembered his mother's words a
+fortnight ago; and impulsively he spoke his thought.
+"Of course if you feel&mdash;you've been let in; accepted
+a baronet under false pretences&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh be <i>quiet</i>!" she entreated, pain and passion in
+her low tone.  "It's <i>you</i> I've accepted."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And you'll take me as you find me?  That's all
+right."  His fingers pressed her arm.  "You do
+care&mdash;actively, Bel?  It's not simply a case of 'L'un
+qui baise...?'"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a question to rouse the incurable coquette
+in her; and she flashed him a fugitive smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In the course of my variegated life," she said,
+"I've mostly found it more blessed to receive than to
+give.  But in your case&mdash;isn't my rather precipitate
+acceptance proof enough for you?  And the fact
+that you can reduce me&mdash;<i>me</i>, to asking for kisses?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh&mdash;kisses!" he dismissed them with a shrug.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well&mdash;if it's more practical proof you're wanting"&mdash;she
+hesitated, then turned full upon him, her
+languor discarded like a garment.  "I simply can't
+bear this crazy talk about going to Ulster.  It's no
+earthly concern of yours.  Mark&mdash;darling, <i>don't</i> go,
+even if they are fools enough to fight."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She leaned urgently towards him.  Her whole
+sweet face looked younger, tenderer, more appealing
+than he had seen it since that momentous afternoon
+in the glen.  So swift, so surprising was her change
+of front, that he looked openly dismayed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You don't seem very keen on practical proofs after
+all," she said, bringing her face a shade nearer to his.
+"I did think your mother would have the sense to
+discourage you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He shook his head.  "Mother understands."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That really means she gives in to your every whim.
+It's the way mothers are made.  Specially when
+they own a son with a chin like yours!  But the
+modern wife isn't quite so accommodating.  And
+I suppose my feeling about it counts for something?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course it does&mdash;tremendously."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then say you won't go; and there'll be no more bother."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He thrust out his formidable chin and looked
+across the loch with troubled eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Darling," she persisted, "where's the <i>point</i> of
+mixing yourself up with a purely Irish quarrel?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He shrugged his shoulders, still keeping his eyes
+away from her face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I suppose&mdash;a natural prompting of the blood.
+Mother's a Stuart, of these parts, with a strain of
+North Ireland in her; and there's a link between
+Ulster and the south-west of Scotland that only
+those who belong there quite understand.  In very
+old days, the two coasts were so close, at points, that
+men could row to and fro in ordinary sea-boats.
+And it's not a purely Irish quarrel, Bel.  It's of the
+first importance that the United Kingdom should
+remain united&mdash;especially just now.  Nothing would
+suit Germany better than Home Rule and 'Ireland-a-nation'
+before she throws off her mask.  Personally,
+I admit I'm keen for a share in the scrap,
+if it comes to scrapping.  I've the blood of fighters
+in my veins.  But of course&mdash;if you're dead against it&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I <i>am</i> dead against it," she said, softly implacable,
+edging closer still.  "And <i>you're</i> too strong to be
+obstinate.  Mark&mdash;you're not going to refuse the
+first thing I seriously ask you to do for me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her low-toned tenderness disarmed him utterly.
+"No, I'm <i>not</i>," he said, with sudden vehemence,
+drawing her to him.  "I won't go to Ireland, Bel.
+No need to worry any more."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With a sigh of relief, she put her free arm round
+his shoulder, lifted her head, and kissed him on the
+lips.  It was the first time she had done so spontaneously;
+and, at the moment, it eased considerably his
+bitter sense of disappointment.  He said nothing,
+however, and for the rest of the evening Bel was all
+tenderness and simplicity; not a shadow of coquetry
+to mar the effect.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+"I think my concession deserves a special reward,"
+he said later on, as he grounded the boat under
+Inveraig, and handed her ashore.  "You might chuck
+your Harry for once and come on up to dinner."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she demurred at that.  Honestly she couldn't
+chuck Harry to-night.  Considering Harry's views
+and her devotion and her resentment, she was taking
+it all beautifully&mdash;in the intervals.  "She's done more
+for me in three years," Bel concluded, "than my own
+people have in the rest of my life.  So you oughtn't
+to grudge her the crumbs that fall from your table!
+You've monopolised me all day; and she hates being
+alone in the evening."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Bring her along then.  <i>I</i> don't mind."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Perhaps not, Mr. Egoist.  But she would.  She
+wants me to herself, just as you do.  Don't you see?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark grimaced.  "No, I don't see.  A couple of
+women.  Morbid rot!  Mother says the Suffrage
+business is increasing that sort of thing.  I'll be glad
+to get you out of the atmosphere and away from all
+that rescue work of hers."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But, Mark, it's splendid work&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course it is, for her.  Quite unsuitable, though,
+for you.  If you really won't come up, I'll see you
+home."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No, she really wouldn't.  She was resolute on that
+point.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Your people up there have had enough of me to-day,"
+she added, smiling into his dissatisfied face.
+"They're like Bobs.  They haven't quite accepted
+me yet.  And&mdash;honestly, I don't seem to catch on,
+somehow, except with Mr. Lenox&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not Sheila?" he asked, a little anxiously.  "I'm
+very keen you two should be good friends."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She evidently knows that, and she's doing her
+best.  She's sweetness itself to me.  But still&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well?  What's wrong with her?"  He was on
+the defensive again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My dear, there's nothing wrong.  If there was,
+she'd probably be twice as charming.  She's the kind
+of tranquil angel who would show up beautifully
+against a tragic background.  But, in ordinary life,
+she seems almost too good to be true."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She's nothing of the kind," he retorted hotly,
+which did not improve matters.  But for the life of
+him, he could not keep cool.  "She's the right sort
+all through."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, if she's such a living wonder, why on earth
+don't you marry her instead of me?" Bel countered
+with perfect good temper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"For a very obvious reason, which you don't
+deserve to be told in so many words."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mark, you're horrid!" she pushed him lightly
+with her shoulder.  "Don't let's spoil our beautiful
+afternoon squabbling over a side issue.  No doubt
+we shall shake down together in the end.  Only give
+us time."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her sweet reasonableness disarmed him&mdash;for the
+moment.  But he was a long while falling off to
+sleep that night.  Things did not easily worry him; but
+within the last twelve hours several events of more
+than minor importance had conspired to that end.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+First, Bel's frankness made it clear that at Inveraig
+she found no atmosphere of genuine welcome or
+of home.  He must give them time, as she had said;
+but it was an unpropitious start.  Second, he had,
+in effect, saddled himself with two promises that
+would be far from easy to keep.  Third, there was
+the unwelcome prospect of that possible flat in town.
+If Bel seriously set her heart on it, he did not see
+himself refusing her; though goodness knew where
+the money was coming from, or how he was going
+to survive large doses of London society.  Son of a
+mother who treated life as an art, he lacked the
+herd-instinct of the social type.  But for all her indulgence,
+and his own imperious ways, he was not radically
+selfish; and beneath his blunt, Scottish exterior there
+dwelt a deep, natural tenderness for woman, as
+woman, common to the essentially masculine man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Marriage, he supposed, meant compromise; and
+he began to see that, with Bel for wife, he would
+have to do his full share of it.  Looking back over
+their "beautiful afternoon," he was uncomfortably
+aware of certain fundamental discords; still more
+aware that his mother had been right in several
+respects.  It was an annoying trick of hers.  She
+had been right about Ulster; about Bel's eye to
+worldly advantage; even about the minor matter
+of her age.  For Mark had discovered, incidentally,
+that she was twenty-nine in June, two years older
+than himself.  Not that a year or so mattered this
+way or that.  But it was an additional score for his
+mother; and gave greater weight to her curious
+antipathy to the girl of his choice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His disappointment about Ulster was keener even
+than he cared to admit; and here again&mdash;as his
+acutely wide-awake brain recalled words and looks
+and tones&mdash;a sudden vexatious doubt assailed him.
+Had her tenderly urgent request been as spontaneous
+as it seemed: a genuine response to his question
+about active caring?  Or had she been skilfully
+leading him towards it all along?  Her pretty
+coquetting with the tea-things, her pretence at being
+married, and her casual mention of a son&mdash;had it
+all been cleverly designed to stir him to the depths
+and so make victory secure?  He hated himself for
+the suspicion.  It persisted none the less.  Yet he
+knew quite well that it would evaporate at the sight
+of her face and the touch of her lips.  Only when the
+spell of her presence was removed was he capable of
+doubting her for an instant; and even so, he saw
+those doubts as a reflection on himself rather than
+on her.  He was tired, simply; and&mdash;yes, more than
+a little disappointed.  That was all; and the sooner
+he got to sleep the better.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Springing out of bed he stood a few minutes at the
+window looking out upon a world of stars in the
+heavens above and the waters below.  Fitfully, through
+the silence, came the clear night note of the curlew;
+and the sound of the ebbing tide was like hushed voices
+talking secrets the stars must not overhear.  As a
+small boy, lying wakeful in the summer twilight,
+Mark had woven entrancing tales about those
+mysterious confidences between the retreating waters and
+the shore: tales that had become part of the fabric
+of his inner life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A few deep breaths filled his lungs with clean cool
+air and quieted his brain.  Metaphorically, he wrung
+the serpent's neck and flung him into the loch.  Then
+he went quietly back to bed.  Happen what might
+Bel was Bel: a bewildering wonder of womanhood,
+neither to be analysed nor criticised; but simply to be
+loved and cherished and&mdash;so far as possible&mdash;obeyed.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0108"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER VIII
+</h3>
+
+<p class="intro2">
+  "England clasps in her embraces<br>
+  Many.  What is England's state?<br>
+  Warn her, Bard, that Power is pressing<br>
+  Hotly for his dues this hour:<br>
+  Tell her that no drunken blessing<br>
+  Stops the onward march of Power.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="intro2">
+  Has she ears to take forewarnings,<br>
+  She will cleanse her of her stains;<br>
+  Feed and speed, for braver mornings,<br>
+  Valorously, the growth of brains."<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;GEORGE MEREDITH.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Two days later the head-lines of every newspaper
+in the kingdom announced in heavy-leaded type
+"Austria declares War," "Partial Russian Mobilisation."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At hundreds of breakfast-tables incredulous people
+read out those few and fateful words.  Even at this
+late hour, the majority could scarcely bring
+themselves to believe that the Titanic struggle&mdash;long
+prophesied to deaf ears&mdash;had begun at last; that
+Austria was the megaphone merely through which
+Germany cried aloud her challenge to the world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Keith Macnair, it need hardly be said, was
+numbered among the minority who had seen, with anger
+and dismay, warning after warning scoffed at or
+ignored by a pacific Government and a comfort-loving
+people; yet he neither exclaimed, nor cursed the
+blind guides who had been sedulously whittling down
+the fighting strength of the British Isles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hullo!  The fat's in the fire," he remarked coolly,
+having pulled in his chair and opened the <i>Scotsman</i>
+with his customary deliberation.  "The voice is the
+voice of Jacob; but the hand is the hand of Esau."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was Lady Forsyth, standing behind him, who
+exclaimed and read out snatches from the Summary
+of Contents with heightened colour and quickened
+breath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though Keith had all the natural man's objection
+to these peculiarly feminine methods, he bore the
+infliction without a murmur, till Mark, towering
+behind his mother, took her waist between his hands
+and propelled her towards the sputtering kettle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Steady on, Mums, and feed your sheep," he
+commanded, standing guard over her.  "Your righteous
+wrath will only give you indigestion, and the
+elderly gentlemen who are engineering this eruption
+won't be one penny the worse."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And you ought to be grateful to them really!"
+Mona remarked, with a wicked twinkle.  "What
+about the German invasion you were praying for?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They all "ragged" her, young and old.  She was
+irresistible; and unquenchable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, at least we can fight invading Germans,
+and we couldn't fight the petticoats!" she retorted,
+while Mark thrust a caddy spoon into her inattentive
+hand.  "But it still remains to be seen whether our
+<i>pax vobiscums</i> will permit us to hurt a single hair of
+a single 'kindred Teuton' head!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The tea was made by now, thanks chiefly to Mark;
+and for five minutes she managed to concentrate her
+attention on cups and saucers.  But throughout the
+meal they could talk of little else than the veiled
+drama of the nations and its probable developments.
+Mark himself was rather quieter than usual; but
+perhaps he thought the more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the younger ones went out on to the terrace,
+he followed Keith into the study, and for some time
+the two&mdash;who were as brothers in all but blood&mdash;sat
+together in a smoky, companionable silence, each
+absorbed in his own printed sheet.  The Irish news
+was by no means reassuring.  But Mark, to Keith's
+surprise, had tacitly dropped the subject; and it was
+the older man who spoke first.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'd give something for a glimpse, this minute,
+into Germany's barracks and her sacred Kiel Canal.
+If I know anything of the Kaiser and his gang, she's
+on the move already; counting on our neutrality of
+course.  God send she may find herself mistaken;
+but Grey will leave no stone unturned to avoid war.
+As a philosopher and a man of letters, I'm with him
+there.  But the rest of me is convinced that nothing
+short of Treitschke's 'terrible medicine' will shake
+us out of our democratic fiddle-faddling and partisan
+squabbling.  It would link up the men and women,
+not to mention the Empire; and as for the Irish&mdash;at
+the first hint of real business, they'd be falling on
+each other's necks.  In that case, Mark, you and I
+would be for offering our services elsewhere."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes&mdash;of course.  Rather so!" Mark agreed with
+fervour; then checked himself and fell silent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Keith said nothing; but his thoughts were
+effectually diverted from the threat of war to a more
+personal threat that touched him very nearly, because
+Mark was Helen's son.  Being a man, he understood,
+as she could never do, the nature of Mark's infatuation
+for this alluring girl&mdash;"the ideal mistress" he
+classified her mentally; the siren-type, who sits
+combing her hair in the sunset and smilingly wrecks the
+souls of men.  The straighter and cleaner a man's
+record, the more easily she flings her gold dust in his
+eyes; and should she chance to fall in love&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Macnair had not yet made up his mind on that
+score.  He was concerned at the moment with one
+painful, practical question: could she, in the event of
+war, conceivably induce Helen's son to play the
+coward's part?  He knew Mark for a man of strong
+passions; but he believed him equally strong in spirit
+and in will.  He felt troubled and anxious none the
+less.  Had he known of that recent surrender he
+would have felt more anxious still.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark left the study without further allusion to the
+subject; and later in the morning Bel appeared
+serenely graceful, in a new yellow silk golf coat and a
+distractingly becoming hat.  With such a vision
+before his eyes no man in his senses could feel seriously
+concerned about European thunderclouds that might
+still, at the eleventh hour, dissolve in a harmless
+shower of rain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bel, of course, was airily convinced they would.
+"Besides," she concluded, with her engaging air of
+sagacity, "where's the earthly use of being an island,
+with an invincible Navy, if we're to be scared by every
+little flare-up across the Channel?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark smiled and shook his head at her.  She was
+ensconced in the deep window-sill of the studio,
+lightly swinging one foot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's not a case of being scared, but of being
+prepared," he said, fingering the stray tendrils in the
+nape of her neck.  "If Germany's engineering this
+squabble it'll be the biggest flare-up the world's ever
+seen; and before many days are out we may be
+thanking Prince Louis on our knees for having kept
+the Fleet in being&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, be quiet!" she commanded, slapping the
+hand that caressed her.  "You're as bad as
+Mr. Macnair."  She leaned half out of the window.
+"It's a divine morning.  A boat on the loch would
+be more to the purpose than all your horrid
+battleships put together.  Here comes the midday
+post."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The <i>Times</i>!" cried Mark, and was promptly extinguished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You aren't going to look at the <i>Times</i> till to-night,"
+she said.  "You're to look at me in my new clothes.
+What else did I put them on for?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The word "clothes" reminded him of an expected
+parcel.  "You wait there a minute," he said
+mysteriously; and very soon reappeared with two of them.
+From the smaller, he extracted a rope of amber beads;
+from the larger, a snow leopard skin, lined with satin,
+to form a natural cloak.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bel's face, during these proceedings, was certainly
+better worth looking at than the <i>Times</i>.  The beads
+were the very colour of her coat; the pale tones and
+dusky markings of the skin harmonised perfectly
+with her hair; and her delight in both was too genuine
+to be marred by minor affectations.  By lunch-time
+Mark had almost forgotten the International Crisis,
+and the threat of war.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But throughout that unforgettable week&mdash;when
+the world's destiny hung in the balance&mdash;events in
+Europe moved swiftly toward the great upheaval;
+while in England the tension of anxiety increased
+daily.  Between those who feared that an enlightened
+Liberal Government would be criminal enough to
+fight, and those who feared the worse criminality of
+its failure to stand by France, there could be little
+peace of mind anywhere, except among the wilfully
+or constitutionally blind&mdash;a large majority in every
+country.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At Inveraig they could talk of little else, except in
+snatches.  And Mark&mdash;reared by his mother to live
+in touch with the whole vast sweep of life&mdash;was as
+bad as the rest: though Bel, in her leopard-skin cloak
+and amber beads, was a vision enchanting enough to
+distract any man's thoughts from graver matters:
+and indeed she did her utmost to that end with fitful
+success.  In her heart she hated this looming shadow,
+chiefly because it dwarfed her proudest achievement&mdash;the
+conquest of Mark: and as the week drew on,
+she became bored; even faintly irritable.  She began
+to find or invent excuses for avoiding meals at
+Inveraig, and when Mark remonstrated, she candidly
+owned to being tired of the subject.  She wasn't
+accustomed to that sort of talk, and a little of it went
+a long way.  She would give him a holiday on Friday,
+she concluded graciously.  They had friends coming
+to join them at The Rowans&mdash;Mr. and Miss Maitland
+from his part of the world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark raised his eyebrows.  "Maitland?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  He's classical master at High Rough School.
+D'you know him?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"'M&mdash;slightly.  I've not much use for him.  Sort
+of chap whose veins run ink instead of blood."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She flushed a little and lifted her head.  "He's a
+great friend of mine; so you needn't make rude
+remarks."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A <i>great</i> friend?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark bent a searching glance upon her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes: in his lukewarm way."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, if he's lukewarm, he'll do!  Didn't I say his
+veins ran ink?  I'll let you be polite to him on Friday,
+and I must have Saturday afternoon and evening
+entire as a reward!"
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+But even while they talked, Europe hummed with
+the stir of gathering armies; and by Saturday morning
+the head-lines announced "Russian Mobilisation
+Complete."  Germany, who had secretly forestalled
+that event, responded by declaring a state of war, and
+an impenetrable veil fell between her and the outer
+world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Keith handed the paper to Mark, who had come in
+late for breakfast.  "There you are, old boy.  I said
+the end of the month, didn't I?  Russia brings in
+France automatically.  It only remains for Italy
+and England to show their hands.  I back Italy to
+keep hers clean and stay out of it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And I back England to fight."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes&mdash;if we've still enough of the old leaven to
+save us from the curse of legal verbiage and inaction."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the rest of the meal he confined himself to
+intermittent "rumblings" (the word was Lady
+Forsyth's) against peace-cranks, Internationals, and
+so forth; but it was not until he had talked over
+the telephone to a friend in Edinburgh that he really
+let himself go&mdash;an event as rare as the proverbial
+"blue moon."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For it transpired that his friend&mdash;a professor of
+distinction&mdash;had just promised his signature to a
+neutrality letter strongly protesting against England's
+intervention in a Continental quarrel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Continental quarrel, forsooth!  And the damned
+fools, not content with their egregious letter, are
+moving heaven and earth&mdash;that's to say International
+and Labour lights&mdash;to get up a Neutrality Committee,
+by way of further assisting a divided Government
+that stands shivering on the brink.  Here we are,
+sunk deep in the ruts of peace in its most repellent
+form&mdash;peace, that has almost landed us in civil war;
+yet sober-minded men and women cry out against
+our taking the only course that can conceivably save
+half Europe, including ourselves, from the domination
+of the German machine."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His quiet grey eyes had a glint of steel in them, as he
+stood there beside the telephone in the study, swept,
+by intensity of conviction, so completely out of his
+philosophic calm, that Helen and Mark, the natural
+talkers, never dreamed of interposing a word.  On the
+rare occasions when the spirit of speech moved him,
+they were willing to listen ad infinitum.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had descended to a lower plane now, and was
+confounding the tyranny of the week-end habit, the
+curse of the country, that would send responsible
+people scuttling out of town on a Friday, though the
+last trump were sounding in their ears.  He also
+confounded, for the first time in his life, that sacrosanct
+institution the Scottish Sunday, which would cut them
+off from letters, telegrams, and papers for twenty-four
+hours.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Never mind, old man, we've got the blessed
+telephone," Mark consoled him, clapping a hand on
+his shoulder.  "And we can jolly well make ourselves
+a nuisance to all our friends and relations.  What else
+is a telephone for?  I vote we run down to Glasgow on
+Monday and sleep the night.  We'd feel a bit closer
+to things&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An imperious tinkle interrupted him.  Admiral Sir
+John Forsyth this time.  Unlike the heads of the
+political world, he had come up post-haste from Dorset,
+and he wanted a few words with his nephew.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was while these things were in progress that Bel
+arrived, eager for a sight of Mark, and found herself
+relegated to the drawing-room with Sheila and Mona
+for company.  Sheila apologised in her friendliest
+fashion; but that was quite beside the point.  The
+appearance of the tea-tray brought in Lady Forsyth;
+but not till tea was half over did the telephone release
+Mark.  Then at last came her chance of escape;
+and the lovers wandered off through the pine copse on
+to the small patch of open moor overlooking the loch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A shame to keep her waiting," he apologised
+tenderly.  "But this is history, darling, on a
+tremendous scale; so you must make allowances."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm trying to."  She dropped her lips with a
+bewitching air of martyrdom.  "But tremendous
+things are rather exhausting.  I can't get into a state
+of thrill, like your mother and the rest.  And I'm
+very glad&mdash;you may think what you like!&mdash;that there
+really is a chance we shall keep out of it.
+Mr. Maitland says Sir Edward Grey has admitted that the
+Entente's not binding, and a Liberal Government
+can't drag a free people into the horrors of war."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Damn Maitland!" Mark flashed out; then reddened
+and drew in his lip.  "Sorry.  But if you don't
+want fireworks you'd better keep that chap's inspired
+remarks to yourself.  Besides, you're practically
+one of us now; and I can't have you talking pacifist
+twaddle."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, don't let's talk of it at <i>all</i>.  I'm sick of the
+whole thing."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark said nothing, and they walked on in silence
+through the heather.  Then she turned to him and
+slipped a hand through his arm.  "Darling, let's
+go off somewhere to-morrow for the whole day and
+forget all about everything, except each other."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Bel!"  He stood regarding her with an enigmatical
+smile.  For an instant she thought he would consent.
+"I'd love to, of course," he said honestly.  "But I
+simply couldn't do it.  Though we can't get papers,
+there's the telephone; and my mind would be on the
+stretch the whole time."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She shrugged, with a faint reflection of his smile.
+"Very well.  I'll join the others.  They're going for
+an outing in any case.  Your Scotch Sunday is so
+desolating."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then I'll call in for you after supper, if you're
+not too tired.  Keith and I are going to Glasgow on
+Monday for the night.  See how they're taking things
+there."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She sighed.  "This wretched war is simply spoiling
+everything."  Her shoulder touched his as she spoke,
+and at once he put his arm round her. "It seems to
+shut me out."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Only because you refuse to come in."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But, Mark&mdash;it's such a horror."  Her shiver was
+not pure affectation.  "And I've no taste for horrors.
+I can feel it hovering there, across the Channel, like
+a tiger waiting to spring.  And when I try to forget it,
+you don't help me.  As you won't come to-morrow,
+I shall console myself by asking Mr. Lenox.  I like
+him the best of your lot."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All right; ask him.  He can keep an eye on you.
+See that you don't flirt with Maitland."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But I do&mdash;always.  It's an understood thing
+between us.  And if I can't have you, I must get
+what fun I can out of him!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Maurice, though feeling the strain in his own way,
+accepted Bel's invitation, plus her proviso that no
+one was to say "War" or "Politics" from start to
+finish.  Privately she felt Mark's defection more
+keenly than she cared to admit, but she intended to
+enjoy herself in spite of it; and she succeeded, by the
+primitive process of playing the two men off against
+each other.  Maitland&mdash;a loose-limbed narrowly built
+person of nondescript colouring&mdash;had for years been
+discreetly in love with her.  He was of those for whom
+discretion is the better part of everything.  For which
+cause a penniless Bel could never become Mrs. Maitland.
+But the moth persisted in hovering round the
+candle, and he had heard with a mild pang of her
+engagement to Sir Mark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Like many schoolmasters of second-rate quality,
+Maitland was less a man of intellect than of specialised
+culture.  Years of close touch with the "humanities"
+had failed to make him human.  He was humanitarian,
+merely: a very different pair of sleeves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Maurice, watching him with Miss Alison, saw the
+girl in a new light, and wondered a little what Forsyth
+would think about it.  But on his return he simply
+remarked that Maitland seemed the sort of schoolmaster
+who disseminated ignorance; that Miss Alison
+had been in great form, and they had had a ripping
+day.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Early on Monday afternoon the two men set out for
+Glasgow; and to Lady Forsyth the house, bereft of
+their presence, seemed a dead thing.  A man's woman
+in the finest sense of the phrase, her men were the
+first best gifts of God to her.  She was their born
+comrade.  She had the rare gift of seeing life with
+their eyes; and through her nature ran a streak of
+inconsistency, peculiarly endearing to the more
+consistent half of creation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even in the midst of her real anxiety lest a
+Government wedded to peace should withhold England from
+the path of honour and safety, her sensitive spirit
+revolted against the oncoming holocaust of death and
+suffering, with a fierce intensity of which Bel's nature
+was purely incapable.  She felt it as a vast thundercloud,
+stealthily, inexorably blotting out the light of
+heaven.  These days of waiting&mdash;days of tense and
+awful quiet for all who were far from the throbbing
+heart of things&mdash;were as the pause of utter stillness
+that precedes the crash of the storm.  And in that
+stillness she could see and feel too vividly things that
+filled her with a shuddering dread.  The whole world's
+sorrow seemed to beat upon her heart, and at intervals
+through the vast diapason of universal anguish came
+the piercing note of personal pain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She knew&mdash;triumphantly, yet shiveringly she knew&mdash;what
+it would mean for her if England went into
+the war, not merely as a protective Power, but as a
+united Empire to challenge conclusions with her
+most insidious and most formidable enemy.  Mark
+would go out to France; and he would lose no time in
+going.  That was his way.  He had said no word of
+it, so far, either to her or Bel.  But she knew his
+intention, if the girl did not; and even while she
+shrank from the surrender of her last best treasure,
+she never dreamed of withholding him.  If it were
+really to be war on a big scale, everything, everyone
+must go....
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0109"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER IX
+</h3>
+
+<p class="intro2">
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Thy trumpet lies in the dust...<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Help me to don my armour!<br>
+  Let hard blows of trouble strike fire into my life.<br>
+  Let my heart beat in pain&mdash;beating the drum of thy victory.<br>
+  My hands shall be utterly emptied to take up thy trumpet."<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;RABINDRANATH TAGORE.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+"War declared&mdash;<i>at last</i>!" Keith announced, in his
+quiet impressive voice; and Lady Forsyth heard the
+words with an odd mingling of relief and dread.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next moment she was startled by a stab of
+almost physical pain near her heart.  That it was not
+physical she knew very well.  Instinctively she glanced
+at Mark, whose eyes were already on her face; and
+there passed between them a swift, unspoken message
+that eased the hearts of both.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Breakfast, usually a cheerful meal, was rather a
+silent affair; and the minute it was over Lady Forsyth
+slipped away to her turret-room.  Sheila was helping
+Ralph pack, that he might hurry down south and
+report himself at the India Office.  Mark had gone off
+to the study with Keith; and Lady Forsyth had been
+sitting in her chair by the window for nearly half an
+hour before she heard his step outside the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned, with his name on her lips; but her
+throat felt constricted, and no sound came.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In response to that mute appeal, he dropped on
+one knee beside her and laid his hands in her lap.
+It was his old boyish trick when he came to confess a
+delinquency and knew himself forgiven in advance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mother," he said, "we've got to put everything
+into this, you and I&mdash;to the uttermost farthing.  All
+our men must go.  And I must give 'em the lead
+myself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His voice was steady, and there was a light in his
+eyes that she had never seen there yet.  For all her
+courage, her own smile was a rather misty affair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You're my uttermost farthing," was all she could say.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  It's bitter hard luck on you.  But&mdash;you
+don't grudge my going?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She shook her head.  "The greater my treasures
+the greater my gift.  This widow's mite is a very large
+mite!" she added, smiling bravely now, and passing
+her hands slowly over his broad shoulders down to his
+elbows where they rested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For answer he looked steadily into her eyes.  The
+faint, yet perceptible barrier raised by his engagement
+was levelled utterly; the old blessed sense of
+comradeship restored.  Friction between them was purely a
+surface affair.  The moment they touched fundamentals,
+they were one.  And Mark, for his part,
+was aware of a restfulness in this deeper understanding;
+a restfulness that he had missed of late without
+knowing it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He knew now, very well; and she saw that he knew:
+but he only said, "I was sure I could count on you.
+Keith, approves, of course.  I rather thought of going
+down at once with Ralph.  You know&mdash;it's enlisting
+I'm after.  The quickest way&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh Mark&mdash;not that!"  Her hands went up in
+protest; and, for the first time, there was sharp pain
+in her voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now be a good Mums and listen without interrupting,"
+he commanded, imprisoning her hands.  "We're
+simply going to have the biggest rush to the colours
+that the world's ever seen.  I'm sure of it.  And it's
+up to us 'aristocratic noodles' to give the sacred
+working-men, of our sacred democracy, a thumping
+good lead.  That's what I meant about my own
+fellows.  Thought you understood&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But, my dear&mdash;" she checked herself, half
+laughing.  "Have you done?  May I interrupt now?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You have interrupted!  Always do.  Go ahead!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, this is how <i>I</i> feel about it.  Scores and scores
+of our blessed noodles will enlist, for the very reason
+you've given.  The thing will be overdone, and if
+there's a shortage anywhere, it'll be among the
+officers.  Then the wrong sort of men will get
+commissions and numbers of the right sort will remain
+stuck in the ranks: one way of democratising the
+Army!  Horrible idea!  I believe, as you very well
+know, in the true aristocracy of breeding and
+character, in its duties even more than its privileges;
+and above all in its innate spirit of leadership, that
+can be trained but not made.  That's why&mdash;especially
+in a war that will exceed all others in horror and
+intensity&mdash;I strongly object to wholesale squandering
+of officer material, our most precious possession."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But, mother, I'm not an officer," Mark protested,
+adding with a twinkle: "You're having a jolly long
+innings, you know!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, I must speak now.  It's my only chance.
+And you're officer material, Mark.  You'd make a
+fine one, with a minimum of training.  You've got it
+in you.  Will you&mdash;for once admit I may be in the
+right?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He regarded her quizzically.  "I was determined
+not to, when you started."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, at least consult Keith and Uncle John and
+Uncle Everard before you do anything drastic!  You
+wouldn't have to wait long for a commission.  We've
+heaps of interest&mdash;Frank Gordon and Jim Stuart,
+not to mention others, would do anything for you in
+that line.  I don't want to be selfish or unpatriotic,
+but you've admitted it comes hard on me.  Why
+make it needlessly harder?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To her entire amazement he flung his arms round her
+and leaned his head against her shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You blessed little mother," he said under his
+breath.  "You're as plucky as they're made.  Our
+share in this war shall begin with a private victory for
+you!  And let's hope it may be a good omen!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Taking her head between his hands he kissed her
+fervently, and she clung to him without a word.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last he sighed and stood up, very erect, looking
+out across the sunlit water to the shadowy hills.  Her
+eyes took the same direction; but the familiar scene
+was no more than a bright quivering blue of colour.
+For a moment they both felt oddly shy of each other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently it passed, and Helen looked up at her son.
+"I can't say what I'm feeling, Mark.  But I don't
+think you'll regret my victory.  Besides, there's Bel."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  Poor Bel," he said in a changed voice.
+"She hates the whole business.  And she'll hate it
+worse than ever now.  But if she plays up as you have,
+she'll do!"  He glanced at his watch.  "She'll be
+here in a minute.  I must go and meet her.  Don't
+stay and brood alone, Mums.  Go down and talk to
+Keith.  He wants to rush into Ardmuir this morning
+and fix up a recruiting show for Friday.  Sir Mark
+Forsyth in the chair!  On Saturday I vote we go
+south.  There'll be a thundering lot to do.  This food
+panic's disgraceful.  Famine, indeed!  As if we hadn't
+a ship afloat."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She put her hands to her temples.  "It makes
+one's head spin.  I'll go soon, dear, but I must have a
+few minutes alone&mdash;to take it all in."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So he left her, and went slowly down-stairs with a
+preoccupied look in his eyes.  It was scarcely the
+look of a lover eager to meet the beloved after two
+days' absence; and in truth his natural eagerness was
+dimmed by a lurking doubt as to how Bel would
+receive his announcement.  The contrast between
+the utter confidence he had felt in his mother's
+acquiescence and his curious lack of confidence in the
+girl he meant to make his wife hurt him horribly.  He
+blamed himself for it, as a matter of course; but deep
+down, he knew that doubt did not come readily to his
+nature; that never yet had he doubted where he loved.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From the front door he caught sight of her at the
+far end of the drive, moving in her graceful, leisurely
+fashion, head bent, eyes on the ground.  She was
+wearing the yellow silk golf coat and the amber
+beads, and the distractingly becoming hat; and, of a
+sudden, Mark realised with a pang, how, in the last
+few days, the great issues at stake had dwarfed
+everything&mdash;even Bel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But now that the tension was over, the die cast, her
+spell reasserted itself; and a great wave of tenderness
+flowed through him.  It would be hateful having to
+leave her: but he was so made that the question of
+choice simply did not enter his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now he hurried forward, convinced that so great an
+occasion must lift her above herself.  It was always
+the same: at sight of her, doubt grew shamefaced&mdash;and
+fled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Before he reached her, she looked up and waved
+with her parasol, and Bobs, suddenly recognising
+her, bounded forward with eloquent tongue and tail.
+While she was patting him, Mark came up and quietly
+slipped a hand through her arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's good," he said, with a sigh of satisfaction.
+"Come to our summer-house on the heather and have
+a talk."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As he led her towards the copse she gave him one of
+her soft side-long glances, whether of scrutiny or
+affection it were hard to say.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Bobs is more demonstrative than his master."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The answering flash of his eye and tongue were
+direct as his whole nature.  "You won't induce me to
+kiss you in the open drive by your base insinuations!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And it was not till they reached the depth of the
+little wood that he came to a standstill; a strange light
+of exaltation on his face.  Then he drew her to him
+and kissed her with a still intensity of passion, as if
+he would make her understand the measure of his
+love before telling her that which, perversely taken,
+might seem to throw a doubt on it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he released her, she stood back a little and
+smiled on him, rosy from his kiss, hands laid lightly
+on his breast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you as glad&mdash;as all that, to get her back?"
+she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"More than all that&mdash;heaps more.  I agree with
+Robert Louis.  Separation has its good points!
+But we'll soon be suffering from too sharp a taste of
+it&mdash;scores of us.  I suppose you deigned to glance at the
+head-lines this morning?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, of course."  She frowned.  "It's horrible&mdash;beyond
+belief.  Rex says it simply means that, in
+spite of all our science and progress, the world's not
+civilised yet."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"More fool he, to imagine it was.  Patches of it are
+half-civilised, that's about all.  And enough too.
+Over-civilisation, goodness knows why, has a queer
+tendency to rot men's souls.  Makes the body too
+comfortable, perhaps."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Rubbish!  That's one of your fads just because
+you're against progress."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not I, in the right direction.  I'm only against
+the modern craze for rushing wildly round a fixed
+point and getting nowhere.  This war may set the
+clock back, but I bet it'll get us somewhere before it's
+done with us."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was back at the unavoidable subject again;
+and this time he resolved to have done with shilly-shallying.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They had reached the summer-house fronting moor
+and loch; and as he stood aside to let her pass in, she
+said, smiling: "I like the way you barbarians justify
+your own point of view!  Anyway, I suppose you're
+all satisfied now, and things will be a little more
+normal?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Normal?"  His shock of surprise sounded in his
+tone.  "How can they be normal when we've got to
+fight for our lives against a Power like Germany?
+Who'd wish them to be?  I'm afraid you haven't
+read much <i>more</i> than the head-lines, Bel.  There's no
+end to think of: no end to do.  As soon as I've
+rounded up my fellows here, we must go back home
+and round 'em up there.  I wanted to enlist myself,
+but mother's persuaded me to apply for a commission.
+She's splendid about it, and I'm counting on you to
+be the same."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mark!"  Her surprise was no less than his own.
+She sank upon a wooden seat near the window and
+looked up at him, with eyes that had gone suddenly
+chill and hard, like bits of blue glass.  "Have you
+quite gone off your head?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Words and tone produced a horrid revulsion of
+feeling.  But he answered her with studied quietness.
+"I was never saner in my life."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She received that statement with a faint lift of her
+brows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You can stand there and tell me&mdash;me&mdash;you're
+going to fight in the most awful war there's ever been,
+as calmly as if you were talking about ordering a new
+suit, in spite of all I said about Ulster?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ulster!  Good Lord, you're not building on <i>that</i>?"
+he cried, enlightened at last.  "My darling girl,
+can't you see for yourself that there's no shadow of
+comparison?  That was a matter of personal choice.
+Something I could give up for your sake&mdash;and I did."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, if you really&mdash;care, you ought to give up
+this too.  It's not fair on me, or your mother.  Fighting
+is the soldiers' business.  Leave it to them."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A few hundred thousand against millions&mdash;eh?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's the Government's fault.  Besides, we've
+plenty of Territorials and things."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His short laugh sounded more impatient than
+amused.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A lot you know about Territorials and things!
+They're thousands below strength.  And anyway,
+Bel, it's not a question of Territorials&mdash;or of caring.
+It's a plain matter of duty."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, you've money and brains.  You could do
+quite good work in lots of other ways."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And round up better chaps than myself to go out
+and fight for me?  No, thank you!  There'll be too
+many ready to take shelter behind that plausible
+excuse.  If they feel they can do so honestly, let
+them.  Anything I could do at home could be equally
+well done by mother and Keith.  Did you happen to
+notice the 'Call to Arms'?  Do words like that leave
+you unmoved?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"N-no.  But it means common men, not men with
+big responsibilities like you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Bel, that's pure quibbling.  It says 'All,' and it
+means 'All.'  Could any man, I ask you, with a
+shred of conscience or love for his country, read that
+and remain at home rotting round with recruits and
+committees?  I couldn't, that's flat.  This war is
+either a crusade or a meaningless horror.  And for
+me&mdash;it's a crusade.  I'm not talking hot air.  There's
+too much of that in the papers already.  I'm only
+trying to make you see that I've no choice.  I can't
+stand outside&mdash;even for you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That simply means you won't," she said very
+low.  He sighed and stood silent, baffled, yet unshaken,
+looking out over the sun-splashed heather.  Then it
+occurred to him that, being a woman, persuasion
+might move her though argument failed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sank on one knee and put his arm round her.
+"Darling," he urged, "I can't bear hurting you like
+this.  War is cruelly hard on the women: but you
+only make things worse for us both if you let it come
+between us."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He felt her stiffen under his hand.  "It has come
+between us utterly," she said.  "All this week it's
+been getting worse.  If you talk till all's blue, I shall
+never see this&mdash;with your eyes.  So it just amounts
+to this.  You must either give up your quixotic
+notion of patriotism, or ... you must give up ... me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She spoke with more than her usual deliberation.
+The words seemed to drop out clear and hard as
+pebbles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Bel!  You don't mean that!" he cried, hurt to the
+quick.  "It would simply break my heart."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His sincerity was so plain, that her own heart
+thrilled in response.  She slipped a hand round his
+head.  Her fingers drifted with a slow caressing
+movement over his hair; and her voice took its most
+seductive tone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mark, darling, if that's true, keep me&mdash;keep
+me.  I'm yours, if only ... you'll stay out of the
+fighting!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Instantly he released her and sprang to his feet&mdash;angry,
+miserable, desperate.  Yet still, in his very
+desperation, he argued, pleaded, and exhorted her
+afresh: without result.  He had struck the layer of
+adamant beneath her skin-deep tenderness.  She
+could not, or would not, see things in their true
+proportion; and, finally, her hardness stung his pride
+into life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's Maitland, I suppose, who's been perverting
+you," he flung out angrily.  "Better marry him, if
+you're so keen on a husband who prefers to let others
+do his fighting for him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At that she swept to her feet, the incarnation of
+dignity, and looked him full in the eyes.  "Rex has
+nothing whatever to do with it.  And your other
+suggestion doesn't deserve an answer."  She stood
+silent a moment; but he neither spoke nor
+moved.  Then: "I&mdash;I'm going now," she said.
+"We shall be leaving here very soon."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No hurry.  We're going ourselves on Saturday."  He
+was watching her fingers.  She had drawn
+off his ring, and she tendered it him without a
+word.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still he made no move.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Take it," she whispered, "it's yours&mdash;now!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>I've</i> no use for the beastly thing," he answered
+between his teeth, and lifting it from her palm he
+flung it out into the heather.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her dignity and coldness went to pieces in a flash.
+"Oh Mark&mdash;what a sin!" she cried sharply; and
+hurrying out, she knelt down and began feeling, with
+fingers that shook a little, for her vanished treasure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark, watching her from the threshold of the
+summer-house, did not so much as notice that faint
+tremor.  The red mist of anger clouded his brain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So much for a woman's sense of proportion!"
+he said bitterly.  "It's not a sin for you to smash
+me up because I refuse to play the shirker.  But it's
+a sin to chuck away fifty pounds' worth of diamonds.
+Money's sacred&mdash;if nothing else is.  Keep it if you
+find it, or it'll go straight into the loch."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As she rose to answer him, her eye lighted on the
+gleaming thing, and with a sigh of relief she picked
+it up.  "Sooner than that, I will keep it, though I
+can't wear it," she said.  "Besides, you may think
+better of this."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not until the Germans do," he answered, and
+she knew he meant it.  "Don't return any other
+trifles, or they'll go the same way as the ring."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then I suppose&mdash;it's good-bye."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He heard the faint tremor in her voice.  But at that
+moment her very tears would scarce have moved him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, good-bye," he said casually, his face hard
+as a rock.  "Whatever happens, let's preserve the
+decencies."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She caught her breath as if he had struck her; then
+turning she walked away through the heather,
+gracefully, deliberately, with the familiar swing of her
+parasol at each step; even as he had seen her walking
+towards him half an hour ago.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had blamed himself for doubting her, and she
+had justified his doubts up to the hilt.  In spite of the
+dull pain and anger within him, his eyes followed
+her, clung to her, till the last gleam of her yellow coat
+disappeared among the trees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, with the look of a man stunned, he sat down
+near the window-ledge and bowed his head upon his
+arms.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0110"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER X
+</h3>
+
+<p class="intro2">
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Vanish every idle thought,<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Perish, last of Folly's ways!<br>
+  All that pride of eye hath sought,<br>
+  All that rebel flesh hath wrought,<br>
+  Utterly reduced to naught,<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;How can ye outlive these days?<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;X.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+That was how his mother found him when she came
+in search of him.  The lunch-gong had brought no
+Mark; and no one had seen him, except Maurice,
+who, from his window, had caught sight of the lovers
+entering the wood.  All the morning she had been
+secretly anxious.  Now she felt certain something
+was wrong, and telling the others not to wait, she
+fled out to his favourite haunt, hardly knowing what
+she expected to find.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not hear her till she set foot in the
+summer-house; and the wild idea smote him&mdash;Could it be Bel?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With a start he looked up; and at sight of his face
+Lady Forsyth's heart stood still.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My darling Boy, what <i>has</i> happened?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark frowned and straightened his shoulders.
+"She's chucked me&mdash;that's all," he said in a dazed
+voice.  "They've poisoned her point of view between
+them."  His eyes challenged hers.  "Mother, you've
+been right all along.  I suppose&mdash;you even foresaw&mdash;this!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dear, indeed I didn't."  Her hand closed on the
+rough woodwork.  She so longed to gather him to her
+heart.  "I was anxious&mdash;a little.  But I hoped better
+things of her."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So did I.  We were a pair of fools, it seems.  And
+there's an end of <i>that</i>."  With a gesture he dismissed
+the subject, and added, almost in his normal voice,
+"What about the meeting?  Any luck?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  People are quite keen.  But&mdash;you'll hardly
+feel like speaking."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I'll speak all right.  The King's affairs come a
+long way first.  I've had enough of false perspectives
+this morning.  I'll probably speak all the better for
+having&mdash;flung in everything."  He sighed.  "Give
+me to-morrow, Mums, to pull myself together, and
+I'll do any mortal thing that's required of me.  But I
+can't show up yet&mdash;you understand?  And it's you
+that must do the telling&mdash;as before!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A spasm of pain crossed his face and she passed a
+hand over his hair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He drew back sharply.  "Oh&mdash;not that," he
+murmured; then checked himself and tried to smile.
+"Sorry.  I'm feeling&mdash;all raw, Mother.  I can't
+be civil even to you."  He could not tell her why
+the feel of a woman's hand on his hair was unendurable,
+and would be, for some time to come.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I understand, dear," she said, and turned to go.
+"Shall I send anything to the studio?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He shook his head.  "Later on, perhaps.  Dinner
+time.  You might come up yourself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course I will."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so she left him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lunch was nearly over when she got back.  They
+had kept some hot for her; but she hardly touched it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Briefly, without comment, she told them her news:
+and escaped with Keith into the study.  To him she
+could speak more freely.  He loved Mark like a
+brother; a good deal more, indeed, than the average
+brother: and she knew&mdash;though neither had spoken
+of it&mdash;that he had shared her distrust of Bel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But her thoughts and her words were of Mark only
+as she stood beside the man who so intimately shared
+their lives, her small hand clenched upon the edge of
+the high mantelshelf; tears in her eyes; but none in her
+voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He faces trouble so exactly like his father," she
+said, when she had told him of Mark's refusal to
+postpone the meeting.  "But Richard's phlegm went
+deeper.  Mark, underneath, has all my terrible
+sensibility; though he won't let me see it except
+accidentally."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Keith said nothing.  He was not given to superfluous
+comment; and on the whole she found his silences
+more satisfactory than other people's talk.  He knew
+she was more or less thinking aloud.  She was not
+even looking at him, but at a full-length photograph
+of her husband&mdash;a powerful figure of a man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's so strange," she went on in the same subdued
+tone.  "I sometimes see Richard's very self looking
+at me out of Mark's eyes.  When the look comes I
+seem actually to feel him there.  Twice this morning
+I've seen it.  Once when Mark spoke of war and
+again when he spoke of&mdash;that wretched girl.  Oh
+Keith&mdash;I hate her!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The low voice broke unmistakably; and she bowed
+her forehead on the back of her hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Macnair stood looking at her, his keen eyes clouded
+with tenderness.  A moment he seemed to hesitate,
+then deliberately, he laid his hand on her shoulder.
+"Helen, don't break your heart over it," he said.
+"We men pull through these things: and Mark is
+made of sterner stuff, if I know him, than to let a girl
+like Miss Alison smash him up for good.  More
+likely to do that by marrying him than by leaving
+him.  There's a crumb of consolation for you!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She raised her head now and smiled at him through
+tears that were not allowed to fall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If there is such a crumb anywhere, trust you to
+find it!  What a blessing you are to us, Keith!"  As
+his hand slipped from her shoulder she caught and
+held it a minute.  Then her thoughts went back to
+her son.  "I wonder&mdash;will he ever have eyes for
+Sheila again, after this?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"More likely after this than before.  Sheila's a
+born mother-woman, a little Sister of Compassion.
+And we men are such fools, that we're very apt to
+overlook the beauty of that type till we've suffered
+a few hard knocks from the other sort.  The revulsion
+from that type, when it comes, is curiously complete.
+But it takes time.  As for our Sheila, whether she
+would have him, after this, is another matter."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helen sighed.  "I can't forgive Maurice yet," she
+said.  "I wonder if he'll enlist?"  And their talk
+slid back to the one all-absorbing subject&mdash;the War.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+As for Mark, he spent that interminable afternoon
+tramping endlessly, aimlessly over the hills; hoping
+by the mechanical motion to deaden thought and ease
+the pain within.  Where all memory was intolerable,
+it hurt him most to recall how cruelly she had tempted
+him by tone and touch; as it were bribing him to be
+false to his own convictions.  The whole thing
+bewildered almost as much as it hurt him.  There were
+moments when he came near to hating her; proof,
+though he did not realise it, that the love she evoked
+was strongly tinctured with baser metal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And all the while Bobs, the incurably faithful,
+trotted to heel or gambolled coquettishly under his
+master's eyes without eliciting a word or caress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hunger and lengthening shadows drew him back
+at last to the home he loved yet now acutely desired
+to avoid.  She had poisoned even that.  Yet how his
+heart ached for her!  How the unregenerate blood in
+his veins craved the touch of her lips and hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He reached his study without encountering anything
+more human than a stray housemaid; and there
+the first thing he lighted on was his own tender and
+beautiful little Study of Contemplation.  Standing
+just inside the door, he feasted his eyes on the soft,
+still face, the small head with its close-fitting cap of
+hair and the long-limbed grace of her figure.  Then
+rage flamed in him.  He felt like smashing the thing
+with a hammer and flinging away the pieces as he had
+flung away her ring.  A mere pulse-beat of hesitation
+saved him and the artist prevailed over the man.  He
+could not murder the work of his hands.  Later on,
+he would give it to Maurice to wean him from the sin
+of impressionism.  Meanwhile, he lifted it as tenderly
+as he would have touched the original, put it away in a
+corner cupboard and turned the key.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had scarcely done so when he heard his mother outside.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Open the door, dear," she said.  "My hands are full."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He opened it and relieved her of a tray set out with
+appetising food and wine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Stunning of you, Mums," he said.  "I'm hungry."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To her delight he ate everything and drank three
+glasses of wine, while they discussed ways and means;
+the money they could realise, the men they could raise
+for England in this most critical hour of her destiny.
+Except for the absence of laughter and badinage in
+their talk, it was as if nothing abnormal had happened.
+But Lady Forsyth did not fail to note the disappearance
+of his terra-cotta treasure; and she was sinful
+enough to hope it had been destroyed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stayed more than half an hour and left him with
+a fervent "God bless you!"  But this time she
+attempted no caress.  She understood.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Next morning, after breakfast, she lingered in her
+turret-room, wondering what he would do with himself,
+hoping he would come and let her know.  He did
+come; and her heart ached at the tired look in his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm going to take the <i>Watersprite</i> up the loch,
+Mums," he told her.  "And I'll be away all day.
+Grant has stocked her well, so I shan't starve.  Don't
+be an idiot if I'm late and go imagining I've drowned
+myself.  At a time like this, a man's life is not his own
+to chuck away.  Besides, I'm not the sort.  And&mdash;there
+happens to be you," he added with a travesty
+of a smile.  "On the whole I'd sooner have the
+honour of being shot by the Germans&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mark&mdash;don't!"  She drew in a sharp breath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sorry, Mums.  But it's true.  By the way, as
+I'm wasting some valuable time hadn't we better
+stay over Sunday?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That would make things easier," she admitted.
+"But I thought&mdash;you'd rather get away soon."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My dear Mother, don't fash yourself with fancies.
+If it'll ease things, we'll jolly well stay.  <i>I</i> don't
+care a damn."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The spark of irritation was purely refreshing: and
+he never apologised to her for "language" accidental
+or otherwise.  So complete was the comrade spirit
+between them that he prided himself on his habit of
+speaking to her straightly as man to man.  More
+than once, in University days, he had filled some
+prospective visitor with envy by the casual remark:
+"Don't be alarmed if you hear me scrapping with my
+mother.  She's the right sort.  I can talk to her just
+exactly as I talk to you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, in answer to his outburst, she said quietly:
+"Very well, Monday.  I'll tell the others."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's all right.  And don't you be a fool about me!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So he left her and she did her best to obey him;
+but the faint consolation that his trouble brought
+him nearer to herself was obliterated by her acute
+consciousness of his hidden pain and resentment against
+the cause of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That grey, weary Thursday seemed as if it would
+never pass.  Clouds had rolled up out of the west.
+Scudding showers lashed the loch; and through them
+she could picture Mark driving the little steam-yacht
+he loved.  Long after sunset he came back wet
+to the skin; but looking, on the whole, more like
+himself.  He had fought and conquered something
+out there in the rain and wind.  But he spent what
+remained of the evening in his studio as before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On Friday evening, when they were gathered in the
+square hall waiting to start, he strode casually
+downstairs and nodded his greetings as if he had merely
+been away for a couple of nights.  He had prepared
+a speech, he said, that ought to make the men of
+Ardmuir sit up to some purpose: and Keith, watching
+the little incident from the study threshold, murmured:
+"Well done, old boy!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A second car had been ordered to accommodate
+the party; and while they made ready, Mark was left
+momentarily alone with Sheila in the hall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then she took courage and looked up at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mark&mdash;I'm so sorry," she whispered.  "I may
+say that much, mayn't I?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a second he held her gaze.  Then: "You may
+say anything you please," he answered, "when you
+look like that!  Truth is," he paused, "she's never
+been taught to see things the right way.  It was
+just&mdash;that one couldn't make her understand."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Poor Bel!  She must be very unhappy."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Bel&mdash;unhappy!"  His astonishment was manifest.
+But then&mdash;Sheila had not seen the look in
+her eyes.  "I doubt it," he added with a touch of
+bitterness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>I</i> don't," the soft voice persisted.  "She's bound
+to be&mdash;if she cares."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But if she cared, how <i>could</i> she&mdash;&mdash;?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The note of pain in his voice gave her still more
+courage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You said&mdash;she didn't understand, and that poisons
+everything."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Touched to the heart he said impulsively, "Sheila,
+what a wise little Mouse you are!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was his old nickname for her and she drew in a
+quick breath.  "Not so very!  But I do know&mdash;about caring."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The first best knowledge surely," he said: then
+Keith appeared and bade them hurry up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But her eyes, shining on him through tears, and her
+words that gave him a new point of view lingered in
+his memory.  Odd how readily he could speak of Bel
+to Sheila, how hardly to his mother, with whom he
+could talk of everything in earth or heaven.  And
+surely no one but Sheila could have been inspired to
+couple sympathy for himself with so tender and delicate
+a plea for Bel.  If she were right, if Bel were
+really suffering, the door of hope might still be ajar.
+Meantime there was his speech; for which he had
+made comprehensive notes; there were convictions
+and appeals that he must drive home to the hearts
+of his hearers; and while he sat smoking in silence
+beside Keith&mdash;who drove the car&mdash;words full of
+vigour and fire came crowding into his brain&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When at length he stood on the platform waiting
+for his clamorous welcome to subside, the flame of his
+conviction burnt away all nervousness, all dread of
+failure; and for half an hour he spoke as none had
+imagined he could speak, himself least of all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"First rate," Keith said quietly as he sat down
+amid a storm of cheers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Heaven knows how I did it!" he answered under
+cover of the noise.  "Wish I could bolt now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the Provost had risen and was praising him to
+his face; a far worse ordeal than the one he had so
+triumphantly weathered.  The recruiting result, in
+figures, was not sensational: but Ardmuir was obviously
+impressed.  It begged leave to distribute Sir Mark's
+"great recruiting speech" as a leaflet; and Sir Mark,
+privately overwhelmed, gave gracious consent, with
+the air of one who made brilliant speeches as easily as
+he ate his breakfast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Really, old boy, you ought to stand for Parliament,"
+Keith said as they drove home.  "If that
+speech of yours is well distributed, the men will soon
+be tumbling in.  One has to give them time up here.
+The Radical spirit is so strong in our beloved country."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And the beauty of it is that the bulk of 'em, if
+they only knew it, remain Radicals just <i>because</i> they're
+so conservative!"  Mark retorted with a flash of his
+mother's humour.  "But Parliament&mdash;no thanks;
+not yet awhile."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Saturday was given over to rounding up his own
+men and business connected with his mother's small
+estate.  That evening he conquered, not without
+difficulty, a temptation to stroll down into the village
+and discover whether The Rowans was yet empty of its
+treasure; and when the last post came in he knew.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Glancing through half a dozen envelopes, he came
+suddenly on Bel's handwriting.  His mother, who
+was watching him, saw, without appearing to see,
+that he pocketed all his letters unopened and, after a
+reasonable interval, rose and left the room.  It was
+easy to guess what had happened; and she rated herself
+for the horrid sinking at her heart.  She could not
+sleep till she knew: but as Mark did not reappear,
+she went up early and, in passing, knocked at his
+door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good night, dear," she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He opened it and stood before her&mdash;transfigured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come along in, Mums."  Drawing her forward
+he closed the door behind her.  "Read that!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He thrust a faintly scented sheet of note-paper into
+her hand, and she obeyed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bel's communication was brief, moving, and very
+much to the point.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you generous enough to forgive me&mdash;and
+come to me?" she wrote without preamble.  "If
+you can keep it up&mdash;<i>I can't</i>.  I saw and heard you at
+Ardmuir.  You are <i>brave</i>.  As for me, I'm bitterly
+sorry and ashamed.  I hate it all still.  But if you
+wish it, I am yours&mdash;unconditionally, BEL.  I shall
+be alone here after 10.30.  I can't face Inveraig."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Forsyth had to read that note more than once
+before she could feel sure of her voice.  To her it
+seemed studied, consciously written for effect: and
+the writing itself was equally studied, with the same
+touch of hardness in it that showed in the level line of
+eyelids and brows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well?"  Mark was growing impatient.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You can forgive her?" she asked, looking steadily
+up at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course I can.  And you must too.  She's
+sorry.  She&mdash;cares.  Isn't that enough for any one?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But she's not convinced."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>I'll</i> convince her, in time.  I hope she'll come
+south with us to-morrow."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Forsyth drew in her lips and at once his
+hands came down on her shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Look here, Mums, I won't have you antagonising
+and doubting her any more&mdash;after this.  It spoils
+everything.  You might make an effort if only for
+my sake.  It's beyond belief getting her back; and
+your attitude's the only flaw in my happiness.  Has
+been all along."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was silent a minute, then she put her two hands
+on his breast.  "Dear, I will make an effort for your
+sake.  I refuse to be the flaw in your happiness!
+It's a degrading position for a mother."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stooped and kissed her for the first time since
+Wednesday morning.  "Bless you!" he said.  "Good
+night."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alone in her room, confronting this new, unwelcome
+development, she realised how, through all the pain
+of his grief, she had been upheld by the secret conviction
+that his loss was gain; some day he would know
+it.  Now the old miserable uncertainty was nagging
+at her afresh.  In her heart, she distrusted the
+sincerity of the whole incident.  But she had given her
+word to Mark, and Bel should have the benefit of all
+the doubts in creation.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Mark's watch was three minutes short of the half-hour
+when he stood outside the square grey house
+perched on the hillside above the road.  A white
+curtain fluttered; and a glimpse of Bel's face signified
+that the coast was clear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he entered the homely sitting-room and
+closed the door she did not run to meet him as a simpler
+woman would have done.  She remained standing
+near the mantelpiece on the farther side of the square
+table, smiling her cool provocative smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mark!" she said softly.  "I've been wondering
+and wondering would you really come?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By that time the square table was no longer between
+them and Mark was holding her as if he could never
+let her go.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Would you have broken your heart, if I hadn't?"
+he asked at last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very nearly!" she admitted, with the slowest
+possible lift of her lashes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But, Bel&mdash;if you cared, how could you pull it
+through?  How could you look at me with your eyes
+like bits of glass?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You forget," she said, "I can act.  It was
+because&mdash;I cared so much; because I couldn't bear the
+idea of your taking part in that horror out there;
+and because you were so obstinate, that in the end
+I put on the strongest screw I could think of&mdash;and
+it wasn't so strong as I supposed.  That's the inner
+history of the last three days."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He regarded her searchingly, taking it all in.
+"Women are queer things," he said.  "Did you really
+suppose I'd capitulate&mdash;under the screw?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I half hoped so&mdash;till I heard your speech.  Then
+I began to see that I'd never known the real Mark:
+only Bel's lover."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And&mdash;did you approve of the real Mark?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She laughed and kissed him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Honestly, I found him rather alarming.  Too big
+altogether for a mere Bel.  But I wanted him more
+than ever.  And now I know he's still mine, I can't
+let him go!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For Mark there was only one flaw in those first
+raptures of reunion: and for that flaw his mother was
+unwittingly responsible.  Nothing would induce Bel
+to come up to Inveraig or to travel south with the
+Forsyths on Monday.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can't face them yet awhile," she persisted,
+"specially your Mother.  She won't easily forgive
+me for hurting you so.  No real mother could.
+Besides, she was probably thanking her stars for your
+escape; and now I've turned up again, like a bad
+penny!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Bel!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she laid her hand upon his lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hush and listen to me.  It wouldn't be fair on
+Harry either; stranding her with those two.  In ten
+days, we can both come south and a regenerate Bel
+can dare to pay you a visit.  Their minds will be full
+of such big terrible things by then that they'll take
+me for granted.  As for you&mdash;the real Mark will be so
+swamped with his responsibilities that there would
+be no time for love-making, even if I came."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the end he was forced to admit that she was
+right.  Three days of fighting himself had not been
+without a steadying effect on his impatient spirit:
+and so the matter was settled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rain and wind had ceased.  They spent all the
+afternoon and evening together on the water; and on
+Monday the Forsyth party travelled down to
+Wynchcombe Friars.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At no time could Lady Forsyth leave Inveraig
+without a pang: and never had it been sharper than
+on that 10th of August with the glory and anguish
+of Belgium's gallant stand beating on her brain,
+and the poignant question at her heart&mdash;when, and
+in what circumstances, would they four see that grey
+rugged house and the lochs and hills of Scotland
+again?
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0201"></a></p>
+
+<h2>
+BOOK II
+<br>
+THE UTTER PRICE
+</h2>
+
+<p><br><br></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER I
+</h3>
+
+<p class="intro2">
+  In my heart there burns a flame;<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But no smoke shows;<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And no one knows.<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Japanese Song.</i><br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Wynchcombe Friars was a singularly perfect relic
+of the Tudor period.  It rambled, it blossomed into
+irrelevant gables, it took you to its heart.  The lordly
+spaciousness of an eighteenth-century mansion seemed
+dull and featureless, by contrast with its individuality,
+its friendly charm.  And of all its beautiful old rooms
+was none more individual than Mark's studio, with
+its oak-pannelled walls, deep window-seats and leaded
+casements that opened upon the sea of pine tops he
+had described to Bel.  For him and his mother, it
+was the soul of the house; and in nothing was their
+intimacy more evident than in the fact that this, his
+holy of holies, was hers also.  A certain square
+bay-window that caught the last of the sun upon the pines
+held her armchair of dull blue brocade, her book-case
+and elbow table.  Blue prevailed also in the window-seats,
+the casement curtains and the Turkish rugs on
+the polished floor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The studio itself contained little beyond Mark's
+paraphernalia, his writing-table and a few pieces of
+priceless old furniture.  The spirit of Michael Angelo
+pervaded the place:&mdash;models of his statues and groups,
+sepia studies by Mark from the great friezes; and a
+portrait of the Florentine's rugged head occupied the
+place of honour above the mantelpiece.  The blue-tiled
+fireplace beneath was flanked by Mark's first
+two essays in statuary: symbolic figures of Triumph
+and Defeat.  Triumph, a splendid nude, stood
+poised upon a rock; arms uplifted, head flung back.
+Defeat, a fallen Lucifer, still sullenly defiant, leaned
+upon his battered sword; a figure of sombre strength.
+The Viking, who accompanied Mark on his moves,
+was set in a dark oak niche that served for frame and
+threw him into strong relief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still, beneath all the beauty and friendliness of the
+room, there lurked the same unobtrusively ascetic
+note that had been more marked in the simpler studio
+at Inveraig.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So at least thought Maurice Lenox, who lounged
+smoking in an armchair, wondering, secretly, how
+Mark could bring himself to leave it all, patriotism
+or no.  He, personally, had found it quite enough of a
+wrench to shut up his modest rooms in Chelsea&mdash;till
+when?  God, or the devil, alone could tell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had gone straight from Inveraig to his home in
+Surrey, wondering what possible use there could be
+for such as he in this terrible <i>galère</i>:&mdash;he, who had small
+knowledge of firearms and so heartily detested taking
+life that he could not even find pleasure in fishing.
+Mark had suggested enlisting in the Artists' Rifles:
+a suggestion since confirmed by Sir Eldred Lenox,
+with a blunt admonition to look sharp about it.
+Sir Nevil Sinclair, of Bramleigh Beeches, commanded
+them.  He would send the boy's name up for a
+commission the moment he was reasonably fit for it: and
+on the whole Maurice found it a relief to have the
+question of choice taken out of his hands.  He had
+stipulated for a few days of his promised visit to
+Wynchcombe Friars, before taking the plunge; and
+those few days&mdash;with Macnair for the only other
+guest had laid the foundation of a genuine friendship
+with Forsyth, whose finer qualities shone out notably
+in this hour of crisis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whereas at Inveraig he had at times seemed selfish
+and a trifle dictatorial, here, as responsible
+land-owner, his mastery and force of character showed
+in a new light.  And as for selfishness&mdash;his whole
+mind seemed set upon the welfare of his people and
+his place in the coming time of stress.  Now, at the
+very moment when he was most needed, and most
+longed to be on the spot, he was cheerfully and actively
+engaged in transferring the reins of government into
+other hands.  To Maurice&mdash;a man of random moods
+and many points of view&mdash;such strength and singleness
+of purpose seemed enviable as it was admirable;
+and the fact that Forsyth had remained unshaken
+even by Miss Alison's defection had made a deep
+impression on the lighter nature of his friend.  Since
+then, he had learnt a good deal more, not only of
+Sir Mark in a fresh manifestation, but of England's
+greatest asset&mdash;sadly misprized in a democratic
+age&mdash;the hereditary lords of the land.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To-day his brief respite was over.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the moment, he and Mark had effected their
+escape from the infliction of war-talk, as perpetrated
+by Mrs. Melrose and the Vicar's wife, at the tea-table
+on the terrace.  Sir Mark's sudden engagement, by
+the way, had been a severe shock to Mrs. Melrose,
+who suspected that Sheila must have played her
+cards remarkably ill.  But that, after all, was how
+one might expect her to play cards of any worldly
+value.  She was her Melrose grandmother all over.
+Not a drop of Burlton blood in her veins.  But
+the war had dwarfed that personal disappointment:
+and the good lady was brimming with benevolent
+schemes for herself and the whole neighbourhood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meantime the Vicar's wife held the field.  Having
+come in quest of a subscription, she had stayed to
+murmur decorous and very premature lamentations
+over the undesirable features of billeting and of the
+Territorial camps: the sort of thing that reduced Lady
+Forsyth to speechless exasperation.  Mark, divided
+between sympathy and amusement, had watched
+her holding herself in, till the assertive voice of
+Mrs. Melrose created a diversion and dubious murmurs
+were drowned in a flood of propositions for the local
+housing of Belgians and the conversion of Wendover
+Court into a luxurious hospital for officers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You, Lady Forsyth, with this heavenly place,
+ought to specialise on convalescents or
+nerve-cases"&mdash;Mrs. Melrose dearly loved making other people's
+plans&mdash;"If we all take a <i>distinctive</i> line, there'll be
+no muddle or overlapping.  And of course dear little
+Lady Sinclair will devote herself to the Indians&mdash;when
+they come."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Privately Helen reflected that if her neighbours
+continued so to afflict her, the first nerve-case for
+Wynchcombe Friars would be its own mistress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was at this point that Mark had given up waiting
+for the Sinclairs.  Not even the presence of Sheila&mdash;who
+had come over with her mother and was staying
+on to discuss "War plans"&mdash;could detain him, once
+Mrs. Melrose held the field.  Basely deserting Lady
+Forsyth he left word that Sir Nevil, if he should turn
+up, would be very welcome in the studio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, while Maurice lounged and reflected, he sat
+at his littered writing-table, a pipe between his teeth,
+two deep furrows in his forehead.  Beyond that
+littered table the room held no other signs of work.
+Easel and modelling pedestal stood empty.  A woeful
+tidiness prevailed, and Mark himself looked older,
+Maurice thought.  Small wonder, seeing all that
+he must forgo at a stroke when his name appeared
+in the <i>Gazette</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So, throughout Great Britain, in the same casual
+unemotional fashion, men of every grade were making
+the supreme sacrifice, cheerfully putting behind them
+all that made life worth living&mdash;possessions, talents,
+hardly earned distinction, cherished hopes and still
+more cherished homes.  No doubt many of them, like
+Maurice, privately rebelled; but they, too, were
+carried forward by the infection of brave example,
+if by no higher motive.  In Mark's company, Maurice
+had felt that infection strongly: but on this his last
+evening of freedom the artist in him raged afresh
+against the hideousness and waste and cruelty of
+modern war.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For ten minutes Mark had been smoking steadily
+and silently.  He had a difficult letter on his mind.
+Maurice, who had the horrors of Tirlemont on his
+nerves, felt suddenly impelled to more candid speech
+than he had hitherto indulged in, lest he be misjudged.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know what your private feelings are,
+Forsyth," he plunged boldly; and Mark started as if
+he had been waked from a dream.  "But the more
+I look at this business of enlisting and going out to
+slaughter Germans&mdash;not to mention the chance of
+their returning the compliment&mdash;the more heartily
+I hate the whole thing.  It's nothing so simple as
+mere funk.  And it's not that I'm shirking&mdash;you
+understand."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, yes.  I understand," Mark rejoined, setting
+his teeth on the stem of his pipe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he did not seem disposed to enlarge on his
+understanding of his private feelings; and Maurice, whose
+mixed emotions were clamouring for expression, went
+on: "Mere funk would at least give one something
+to tackle and overcome.  It's this cursed inferno
+going on inside one's head that does the damage.
+And the beastly thing seems quite independent of
+one's thoughts or attention.  Just keeps on
+automatically at the back of my brain.  Even when I'm
+reading or talking, I can hear those infernal guns
+and shells.  I can see the mangled fragments that
+once were men&mdash;the wounds&mdash;the blood&mdash;the slopes
+of the Liége forts&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Damn you!  Shut <i>up</i>!"  Mark leaned forward
+suddenly, a spark of anger in his eyes.  "D'you
+suppose you're the only one that's plagued with an
+imagination?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Maurice sighed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sorry, old chap," he said, disappointed, but
+contrite.  "It's a relief all the same.  And I
+thought&mdash;you understood&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course I do: a long sight too well."  Mark's
+tone was gentler now. "If it's relief you're after,
+you'll get that most effectively by going out yourself;
+seeing things with your actual eyes: doing things with
+your actual hands that'll give you no time for
+cinematographs in your head.  You can thank your stars
+you're a man.  It's the women given that way who'll
+have the devil's own time of it.  My mother's one,
+worse luck; and it'll come hard on her&mdash;when I'm
+gone."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Maurice ventured no comment on a subject so
+poignantly intimate as Lady Forsyth's anxiety for
+her one remaining son; nor did Mark seem to expect
+any.  He took a few pulls at his pipe, then reverted
+to generalities.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't write me down an unfeeling brute, Maurice,"
+he said with his friendly smile.  "War's the roughest
+game on earth and we've got to be a bit rough with
+ourselves if we're to play it to any purpose.  I'm
+horribly well aware that the 'sorrowful great gift
+of imagination' is the very deuce on these occasions.
+A shade less of it in us, who have to do the killing,
+and a shade more of it in our Westminster Olympians&mdash;who
+have to do the foreseeing and forestalling&mdash;would
+be a pleasanter business for ourselves and a
+better look-out for the country.  They're an agile
+crew with their tongues; and if words were bullets,
+we might be in Berlin the week after next!  Personally,
+I'd like to see most of 'em scrapped 'for the duration
+of the war.'  Kitchener paramount, with a picked
+Council, would pull us through in half the time.
+But that's not my business nor yours.  It's for us to
+play up all we can; thank God for one real Man, and
+not waste our precious energies in grumbling.  There's
+a sermon for you.  And you brought it on yourself!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Maurice rose, flung away his cigarette end, and
+strolled down the length of the room and back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's done me a power of good being here," he
+said, coming to a standstill by the mantelpiece and
+contemplating Mark's "Triumph."  "You're a man
+as well as an artist, Forsyth; and the bulk of us are
+not; I, personally, am cursed with too much of Uncle
+Michael in my composition."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Confound your Uncle Michael!  You run along
+and enlist and kill every German you can lay hands to
+and your composition will take care of itself.  A wee
+bit stiffening's all you want; and a wee bit taste of
+red-hot reality will put some backbone into your
+studio-bred art, that ennobles nothing and nobody and
+doesn't even want to make itself understood.  It's
+just on the cards that this war&mdash;when we're through
+with it&mdash;may give us an altogether saner and more
+robust revival of art that will spring naturally from a
+more robust conception of life: an art that will
+genuinely reflect the spirit of the age, as Michael Angelo
+reflects the Renaissance.  Our present age of machinery
+and money-getting has precious little spirit to reflect.
+No collective convictions.  Practically no faith,
+except in success.  Consequently life has no vital use
+for art: and we're ousted by the cinematograph.
+A few, like myself and Sinclair, still hang on to
+beauty and the classics.  The rest, like the bulk of
+your advanced friends, say 'Ugliness, be thou my
+beauty' and proceed to make a little hell of their own
+in the Grafton Galleries!  Just at present, Maurice,
+the mere artist is the most superfluous creature on
+God's earth...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He suddenly laughed and checked himself.  "Off
+on my hobby-horse again!  Why the deuce don't you
+chuck a book at me, old chap?  Too much spouting
+at these recruiting shows will make me an infliction
+to my friends.  Ah&mdash;there goes Mrs. Melrose!  Joy
+for Mother!  Likewise the devout Mrs. Clutterbuck,
+who thinks to advertise her own virtue by maligning
+better folk than herself.  Come on down.  We'll
+get the tail-end of tea and the poor dears will need
+cheering up."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They found the poor dears in very fair
+spirits&mdash;considering.  Helen was delighted at recapturing
+Sheila; and the girl herself made no secret of her
+distaste for the restless superficial activities of her
+own home.  A telegram from Sir Nevil Sinclair
+explained his non-appearance and begged Mark not
+to fail him at the Bramleigh meeting next day.  Then,
+tea being removed and the others dispersed, Mark
+found himself alone with Sheila, whom he had scarcely
+seen since the day of Bel's regeneration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's good to get you back again, Mouse," he said,
+with brotherly directness: and as she merely smiled
+without looking up, he allowed his eyes to linger on
+her face.  "But I'm not sure I approve of the massage
+plan, specially if it means careering off to France
+with Miss Videlle."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila hesitated.  "I thought&mdash;if you married&mdash;there
+might be Bel.  But if Mums really needs me,
+I'd leave anything, anyone ... for her.  She knows
+that."  The girl's voice throbbed with feeling and a
+faint colour showed in her cheeks.  "I'm very doubtful,
+though, whether she could or would stay here
+long&mdash;without you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark started and frowned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She must!  She'll be safe here; and there's no
+end of useful work for her on the spot.  All the same&mdash;"
+he paused, looking deep into the heart of the wood,
+at pine stems rosy with shafts of light.  "I believe
+you know best.  She won't stop.  She'd break her
+heart.  War comes cruel hard on the women."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila said nothing: but the set of her lips showed
+a faint line of strain that he had not noticed before.
+"Come for a quarter-deck prowl with me, Mouse,"
+he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They paced the wide-flagged terrace, veined with
+moss, till near dinner-time; and only at the last did
+Mark speak the thought uppermost in his mind.  They
+had reached the far end when he came to a standstill
+and faced her squarely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sheila&mdash;it goes against the grain asking favours
+for Bel, even of you and Mother; but you were such a
+brick before; and now&mdash;it's a bit of an ordeal for her
+facing you all after&mdash;what happened up there.
+Otherwise she'd have been here sooner.  Of course I'll
+make her speak to Mums straight away, which may
+clear the air, between them.  But I want you all to be
+ever so kind and not let her feel a shadow of
+awkwardness.  Just pick up the threads again as if
+nothing had happened.  Will you&mdash;for my sake?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila was leaning now against the balustrade, her
+hands pressed palm downwards on the stone work.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, Mark," she said in an odd, contained voice,
+"I'll do anything I can for your sake.  But in my
+heart&mdash;" she suddenly looked up at him with her clear
+honest eyes, "I can't forgive her&mdash;ever!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>You</i>?"  His surprise brought the blood to her
+cheeks.  "But when it happened you were
+so&mdash;understanding.  It was you who took the edge off
+my bitterness."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because then&mdash;I didn't understand," Sheila
+explained with difficulty.  "I thought she had really
+lost you through her own blindness; and&mdash;I was sorry
+for her.  But afterwards, one couldn't help suspecting
+it was all ... that perhaps she was simply
+... putting on the screw."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She admitted as much," he said, looking away
+across the rose garden.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mark!  How <i>could</i> she?"  Her low tone vibrated
+like a smitten harp-string.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's the mystery to a masculine brain.  It
+hurt&mdash;considerably.  But it seems women do these
+things."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila checked a natural impulse to repudiate the
+sweeping assertion.  She saw him deliberately erecting
+a screen for Bel, at the expense of others; but she
+had already been candid enough, and she would not
+permit herself to insinuate disparagement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her enigmatical silence urged Mark to add: "Bel's
+had her share of unhappiness, anyhow.  She didn't
+enjoy those three days much more than I did and she's
+lost more than a week down here.  So just be good to
+her, you deceptive little bit of adamant&mdash;and bless
+you from my heart."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's bribery!" Sheila said laughing, and straightening
+her shoulders.  "I don't take payment for
+my services.  But it's time to go and dress for dinner!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As they strolled back to the house she caught herself
+reflecting quite philosophically on the impunity
+with which the Bels of this world may steal horses,
+while their less privileged sisters dare not cast a glance
+over the hedge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But in spite of her excuse about dressing for dinner,
+she seemed in no such hurry after all.  A sudden
+longing came over her to see the studio, to sit alone
+for a few minutes in that shrine of blessed memories:
+and, having seen Mark safely vanish into his bedroom,
+she made bold to venture in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sinking into Lady Forsyth's armchair, she let the
+crowding memories sweep through her brain, while
+her eyes ranged from picture to picture, from statue
+to statue, as it were learning them by heart, because
+in future the right of entry she so prized would belong
+to another.  For her, Mark and his art were one and
+indivisible; and, by an unerring instinct, she dreaded
+the effect of Bel's demoralising influence on both.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dearly she loved the virile figure of Triumph;
+more dearly still, the Viking.  Him, she saw and felt
+as Mark had hoped that Bel might see and feel him.
+She had been at Wynchcombe Friars during those
+wonderful days when he came to life under Mark's
+hands; and in her private heart he stood for the
+symbol of his creator's unquenchable spirit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In all these children of his hand and brain, she found
+the quintessence of the man, and it was her instinct
+to seek the essence of things.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark himself, without and within, was all that she
+would have a man be&mdash;she, who seemed fated to
+attract only the "poor things" of earth.  Since Ailsa's
+death and his return from Europe, she had worshipped
+him, with the still intensity of her Northern nature.
+So felicitous had been their relation, and she so young,
+so happy in a home atmosphere the very antithesis
+of her own, that no afterthought had troubled her
+unclouded content.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For this reason, she had been able to accept, loyally,
+uncritically, his sudden and bewildering infatuation
+for a girl obviously unworthy of him; an infatuation
+that could survive even his knowledge of the motive
+which had promoted Bel to such unsparing use of
+her power.  Entirely one with him in spirit, she could
+not choose but will what he willed: and conviction
+that Bel honestly loved him had mitigated the pain
+of her own hidden disappointment in him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But now even that faint consolation was gone:
+and here, where associations were more intimate
+than at Inveraig, the shock to her belief in him seemed
+infinitely harder to bear.  Here the question forced
+itself upon her&mdash;how could he, being what he was?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And his fresh appeal on behalf of Bel had badly
+shaken her innate capacity for acceptance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Because of that appeal&mdash;which would also be made
+to the others&mdash;this girl, who had so cruelly tormented
+him for her own ends, must not be allowed to suffer
+a twinge of the discomfort she so richly deserved.
+For the first time, Sheila was goaded almost to the
+point of rebellion.  For the first time her will was at
+odds with his: and it hurt more than she chose to
+admit.  From a child she had invented her own
+private code of courage that never allowed her to
+say, "I can't bear it."  And she would not say it now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She would do what he asked, under protest, because
+he asked it.  Her attitude, she was convinced, would
+matter nothing to Bel, who obviously looked down on
+her, from the attitude of her twenty-nine years, with a
+mild good-humoured contempt.  But it would matter
+greatly to Mark;&mdash;and that sufficed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She rose at last and wandered round the beloved
+room.  Before the Viking she stood a long while,
+trying to draw the valiant soul of him into her own
+soul: then she went reluctantly out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As she closed the door behind her, Mark opened
+his own and smilingly confronted her.  "Hullo!
+Is that the way you dress for dinner?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She coloured a little under his gaze.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I couldn't resist going in&mdash;just to greet them all."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well&mdash;you might have let me come too!  Are
+they such very special friends?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A part of me&mdash;almost," she said very low.  "I've
+known most of them&mdash;haven't I?&mdash;ever since they
+were born."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then she went quickly down the passage; and for
+several seconds Mark stood looking after her.  The
+sudden softening of his whole face, could she have
+seen it, would have been balm to her heart.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0202"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER II
+</h3>
+
+<p class="intro2">
+  The heavens such grace did lend her<br>
+  That she might admired be.<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;SHAKESPEARE.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Next morning early, Mark drove Maurice to the
+main line station, despatched him with a final volley
+of chaff, and proceeded patiently to tramp the lane
+outside till the down train should bring him the desire
+of his eyes.  From the station-master he learnt that
+"she" might be anything from twenty minutes to
+two hours late.  Yesterday five specials had run
+through, packed with horses and men, and there would
+be more to-night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Jolly for they Germans, sir!" he added with a
+jovial wink.  "They <I>do</i> say now that the British
+Army will be keeping Christmas in Berlin!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And on the other side they say the Kaiser will
+keep it in London," Mark answered him.  "Best
+leave fairy tales to the Germans.  It's their line!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he retired to commune with his own heart in
+the lane.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The train gave him ample time to lose patience and
+recapture it; and the longer he waited, the brighter
+grew the halo round Bel's golden head.  Idealist as he
+was, in art and life, he could not choose but idealise
+the woman he loved: if, indeed, he were not rather in
+love with a phantom of his own brain, who wore the
+appearance and spoke with the voice of Bel.  During
+the last ten days, while his conscious mind had been
+absorbed in things practical, the subconscious,
+unoccupied artist in him had been sedulously gilding her
+halo; and as for that bewildering jar in Scotland, he
+had so completely credited her with his own sensitiveness
+on the subject, that his one wish was to make her
+forget it had ever been.  He had shrunk even from
+asking her to speak of it to his mother; and had made
+the request in his last letter, rather than spring an
+unpleasantness on her by way of greeting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And now&mdash;all he craved was herself.  Her letters
+were not the same thing at all.  Clever, affectionate
+and often amusing, they seemed just to miss something
+that, for him, was the secret of her charm.  In them
+the slightly studied effect of her whole attitude to
+life seemed more definitely artificial; and after reading
+them, a troubled uncertainty was apt to pervade his
+mind.  But sight and touch of her would cure all
+such lover's folly&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah&mdash;the whistle at last!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He reached the platform as the train drew up, and
+there emerged from a distant carriage the tall,
+unmistakable figure in a bluish coat and skirt and
+close-fitting hat.  About midway down the platform they
+met and clasped hands.  She coloured a little when
+their eyes met; but they merely talked of luggage and
+the lateness of the train.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is a common experience, that first, faint shock of
+actual meeting after keen anticipation; and in these
+two it waked the undersense that, although they had
+taken the most hazardous step in life, they were still
+comparative strangers.  In some vague way they
+seemed to have lost touch; to have become suddenly
+shy of each other&mdash;the man more so than the girl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Shy or no, she was contented, utterly, to be sitting
+there beside him in the August sunlight, speeding
+between stretches of ripe cornland; between purple
+sweeps of heather, when they climbed a ridge; and
+on through rolling open country where the earlier
+trees showed a yellow leaf or two, and the oaks were
+still sunset-tinted with their second blossoming.
+England, relying serenely upon her grey ghosts of the
+North Sea, lay dozing in the high noon of the year,
+while little Belgium, like another Kate Barlass, thrust
+her arm through the staple that the murderers might
+be stayed, if only for a moment.  A Territorial
+Camp, an occasional motor decked with flags, a group
+of khaki figures resting in the shade&mdash;these were the
+sole reminders of that invisible horror across the
+Channel, that for Bel was no more than the shadow
+of a shadow, though the cloud of it overhung her own
+life and set visibly upon her lover's brow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Every now and then she took stock of him under her
+eyelids, from his rough motor-cap and his sensitive
+mouth, safe-guarded by that uncompromising chin,
+to the lean, strong fingers controlling the machine.
+A woman could safely entrust her destiny to that
+mouth and those hands, though she might wish,
+incidentally, that he would take a less exaggerated
+view of this singularly inopportune war.  It was just
+her luck that it should have been timed to spoil the
+most promising "phase" of her life.  If only Mark's
+admirable virility were tempered by a touch of Rex
+Maitland's intelligent common sense, matters would
+be so much easier and pleasanter all round.  And the
+coming interview with Lady Forsyth was a nuisance,
+to put it mildly: but still&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Have I given you time to get through the worst
+of your troublesome affairs?" she asked after an
+interchange of commonplaces that led nowhere.  "I'm
+hoping for a clear field as the reward of my lost week."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He gave her a contrite glance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I wish it were clearer.  Russell, my land-agent,
+has played up like a Trojan.  But the wood seems to
+thicken as one goes on.  And to-day I'm booked for a
+recruiting show at Bramleigh.  No getting out of it.
+Sir Nevil Sinclair&mdash;the artist, you know&mdash;said I
+must manage to placate you somehow.  So please be
+placated and save me the managing!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Down went the corners of her mouth.  "Our first
+day!  And not even Mr. Lenox to play with."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Won't Sheila do?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"As a substitute for <i>you</i>?  Mark, your modesty is
+incredible!  Is she with you still?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She came back yesterday."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And Mr. Macnair?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are they part of your permanent family, those two?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"More or less.  People just accrue to Mums.  Are
+you placated now&mdash;Queen of Wynchcombe Friars?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She laid gloved finger-tips on his knee.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm trying to be.  I vowed a vow to be heavenly
+good this time, to make up for...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His hand closed on hers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's over and done with," he said.  "I'm
+sorry&mdash;even about Mother.  But it seemed only fair.
+I'll take you to her straight&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'd prefer half an hour first with her son&mdash;not
+in a motor on the open road!  Darling, give me time
+to feel more at home."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His eyes sought hers.  "I'm agreeable.  We'll stop
+at the gate and go up through the wood.  I can fetch
+the car afterwards.  No superfluous attendants these
+days!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On a cushion of moss in the cool of the pine-wood,
+they recaptured the atmosphere of Scotland and the
+little cloud of estrangement melted away.  Mark,
+who had keenly felt the momentary jar, was the more
+relieved.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now, my darling girl, time's up," he said, reluctant,
+but inflexible; "Mother will be picturing us
+wrecked on the road, and sending poor old Keith to
+pick up the pieces!  Come."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At that, she knelt upright, and, with a charmingly
+tender air of proprietorship, passed her hands over his
+head, bringing them to rest on his shoulders.  "I'm
+glad I've found you again," she said.  "That strange
+man at the station rather alarmed me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You knew how to conjure him away, you witch!"
+he answered, stopping her lips with a kiss.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She accepted the kiss, but not his tacit dismissal
+of the subject.  For her, a new sensation not analysed
+was a sensation wasted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I suppose it was that things hadn't time to crystallise
+properly after the break," she went on, twisting a
+button between her finger and thumb.  "I hope the
+War Office will be merciful and allow us a good spell
+this time.  Separations are rather uncanny things.
+You never quite know&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, if you don't know me when I get back this
+evening," he said, with perfect gravity, "the marriage
+that has been arranged, etc., had better not take
+place."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mark!"  Her voice had a sharp, startled note.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That'll learn you!" he retorted, smiling.  "We'll
+make out our 'para' to-morrow."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he heard no more of the subject.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They found Lady Forsyth alone in the drawing-room
+reading her midday post.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My dears!"  She sprang up to greet them.
+"We've been wondering what had come to you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark explained, asked a few questions, backed
+casually towards the door&mdash;and vanished, leaving the
+women alone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bel had resolved that there should be neither
+awkwardness nor hesitation.  Already she had rehearsed
+the little scene half a dozen times; and as the
+door closed, she turned to the small, upright figure
+near the piano, both hands flung out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dear Lady Forsyth, you <i>are</i> going to forgive me,
+aren't you?  I know I don't deserve it.  But Mark
+has been so beautifully generous&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That is easier for him than for his mother," Lady
+Forsyth rejoined with her disconcerting frankness:
+but her smile made partial atonement and she took
+the proffered hands.  "Not that I'm belittling Mark's
+generosity.  It takes a just man to be generous
+even in exasperating circumstances; and Mark possesses
+that rare quality in a high degree.  He particularly
+wants us all to make light of the whole matter; and&mdash;to
+please him, Bel, I can at least condone what I can't
+pretend to understand."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This&mdash;as may be supposed&mdash;was not precisely the
+due Bel had prepared for herself.  But she had
+the adaptability of the born actress; and she
+recognised that Lady Forsyth had paid her the
+embarrassing compliment of speaking her mind as to a
+daughter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's rather a crushing form of forgiveness!"
+she said, with the pretty droop of her lips.  "And I
+don't suppose it's much use trying to explain...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not the slightest, my dear."  Lady Forsyth's
+tone was brisk but kindly.  "Facts, like beauty, are
+best left unadorned.  I take it for granted you must
+have been very much upset to hurt a brave man so
+unnecessarily.  Had your refusal been final, I could
+have better understood."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl flinched at that and bit her lip.  "You
+don't sound much like forgiving me.  And I don't
+think," she made bold to add, "that Mark would be
+quite pleased if he heard you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He would probably bite my head off," Lady
+Forsyth answered, taking the wind out of her sails.
+"And if you want to make him angry with me, you can
+tell him what I have said.  I should say just the same
+if he were present.  Mark and I are in complete accord,
+however much we squabble.  He knows my bark is
+worse than my bite: and you'll soon know it too, Bel.
+So don't let's write in brass what is meant to be writ
+in water.  We shall gain nothing by making Mark
+our apple of discord.  He's a very large apple, big
+enough for two!  Now, after that, let me 'behave'
+and show you to your room.  Later on, you must see
+over the dear old house."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  It's a dream of a place."  Bel swerved
+thankfully to a more congenial subject and the still
+more congenial reflection that all this stately,
+soft-toned beauty would some day be her own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once this wretched war was over, everything would
+go swimmingly.  He would settle down and shed some
+of his troublesome ideals.  That flat in town&mdash;which
+she had already chosen and furnished mentally&mdash;would
+be the best possible antidote for what she vaguely
+styled "that sort of thing."  She washed her hands
+and tidied her smooth hair in a frame of mind too
+serene even to be clouded by the prospect of a whole
+afternoon without Mark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And downstairs, alone in the drawing-room, Lady
+Forsyth was playing Grieg's Temple Dance with a fire
+and fury that brought Keith in from the terrace,
+startled concern in his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Bless my soul, Helen!  Who are you wanting to
+murder now?  The Crown Prince or one of our own
+super-Solomons?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Neither," she answered, crashing out the last
+double chord.  Then, swinging round on the stool
+she faced him with heightened colour, head in air.
+"It's Mark's future wife.  And I'm in terror that
+he'll want to marry before he goes out.  Keith&mdash;it's
+not only wicked prejudice.  I distrust her more
+than ever.  She came to me with a pretty, ready-made
+apology which I am afraid I dislocated by my incurable
+candour.  Then, having let fly for my own satisfaction,
+I proceeded to smooth things over for love of
+Mark.  Told her my bark was worse than my bite."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That I can swear to," Keith struck in smiling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Still&mdash;by every oath I mustn't use, if I was a
+natural savage instead of a Christian woman, who
+adores her son, I'd <i>bite</i> her with all my teeth&mdash;There!
+Between that and Grieg, I feel a little better.  But,
+oh, you sagacious bachelor, you have your divine
+compensations.  At times it's a positive curse to love
+any human thing better than your own soul."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is that," Macnair agreed with quiet emphasis,
+as the door opened to admit Mark himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The air seemed still to vibrate with Helen's
+impassioned outburst, and he glanced quickly from one
+to the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What have you two been plotting&mdash;eh?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The wholesale reconstruction of the universe!"
+Keith answered lightly; but Mark went straight to
+his mother and laid his hand on her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She's been working herself up about nothing,"
+he said.  "I can feel her quivering all through.
+Keith, you oughtn't to encourage her.  She'll be
+needing all her reserves of strength, if she's to pull
+through this.  Would the drive to Bramleigh calm
+you down, Motherling?  Or would it churn you up
+again, hearing me speak?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No: I should love it," she answered in a low
+voice.  The invitation and the touch of his hand had
+soothed her already, as nothing else could have done.
+It was as if, by some telepathic process, he had divined
+the cause of her emotional stress; and when the two
+girls came in he said casually, without removing his
+hand: "I'm carrying Mums off with me to Bramleigh.
+You've had your drive, Bel, and the outing
+will do her a power of good."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The announcement faintly ruffled Bel's conviction
+that all was for the best in this best of all possible
+worlds.  But later in the evening, when her own turn
+came, when she wandered with Mark through the
+terraced gardens down to the river, he found her
+apparently satisfied, if not communicative, as regards
+her interview of the morning.  Convinced of her
+own supreme sovereignty, instinct told her that she
+would gain nothing by "giving the woman away."
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0203"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER III
+</h3>
+
+<p class="intro">
+"I am the Fact," said War, "and I stand astride the path of
+Life....  There can be nothing else and nothing more in human
+life until you have reckoned with me."&mdash;H. G. WELLS.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+That same evening, a good deal later on, Lady Forsyth
+sat at her dressing-table, brushing out her hair,
+recalling, with pride, Mark's vivid speech, the cheers,
+the record "bag" of recruits, and wondering if he would
+forget to come for his usual good night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His room opened out of hers; and the door between
+stood chronically ajar&mdash;a companionable habit begun
+in her first days of loneliness after his father's death.
+He rarely missed the little ceremony of early tea,
+when he would establish himself at the foot of the bed
+and argue or read aloud, or simply "rag" her, as the
+spirit moved him.  Then he would wander in and out,
+in the later stages of dressing, hindering and delighting
+her in about equal measure.  Or they would carry on a
+violent argument through the open door, a pair of
+disembodied voices, till some climax would bring
+one or other gesticulating to the threshold.  These
+morning and evening hours were the times of their
+most formidable encounters, their wildest nonsense,
+their utmost joy in each other's society, exhibited in
+a manner peculiar to themselves.  At night the
+"hair-brush interview" had become a regular institution.
+It might be over in ten minutes or last till
+midnight, according to their mood.  This was the
+time for graver matters, for the give and take of advice;
+and although there might be little outward show of
+sentiment, those hours of comradeship were among the
+most sacred treasures of the mother's heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To-night she brushed till her arm ached, listening
+for his footstep; and the moment she put the hated
+thing down, he came, bringing with him the whiff of
+cigarette smoke she loved.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Standing behind her, he took her head between his
+hands, lightly passing his fingers through her hair
+and smiled at her in the glass.  She was responsive
+as a cat when her hair was caressed; and he knew it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Poor deserted little Mums!" he said.  "Had you
+given me up in despair?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Absolutely."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And how long would you have hung on past despair
+point?" he asked with a twinkle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Probably half an hour....  What have you
+done with your lady-love?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ordered her to bed."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So early?  All for my benefit?  I scent an ulterior
+motive."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed and pulled her hair.  "Your instinct's
+infallible!  It's this marrying business.  I know I
+promised to wait; but the whole face of the world has
+changed since then."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He detected the faint compression of her lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mums, you're incorrigible.  She's a delicious
+thing."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Who says otherwise?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You do&mdash;internally!  Not a mite of use throwing
+dust in my eyes.  When you're converted&mdash;as you
+will be&mdash;I shall know it, to the tick of a minute.
+Meantime"&mdash;he moved over to the window and stood
+there facing her&mdash;"the question is, in a war like this,
+oughtn't one to marry, if possible, before going out?
+She got on to war weddings this evening, and I was
+tongue-tied.  That mustn't happen again.  What's
+your notion?  D'you still think&mdash;wait?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A pause.  She dreaded, as he did, the possibility
+of Wynchcombe Friars passing into the hands of
+Everard Forsyth and his son, whose views were not
+their views, except in matters political.  Had the
+wife in question been Sheila, her answer would have
+been unhesitating.  As it was, she parried his
+awkward question with another.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What do you think yourself, Mark?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, you clever woman!  I have my answer.
+And in this case I believe you're right.  Personally,
+I'm game to marry her at once.  But ... there are
+other considerations.  Seems her precious Harry's
+been rubbing into her that these war marriages aren't
+fair on women&mdash;that it's a bigger shadow on their
+lives losing a husband than a lover.  It's a tragic
+sort of start, I admit; and once we're married the
+wrench of separation would surely be harder for both.
+Then, as regards myself, you know how this coming
+struggle has obsessed my mind; how we've doubted,
+both of us, the spirit of modern England&mdash;the selfish,
+commercial spirit of the red-necktie brand.  And
+now that I see the old country shaming our doubts,
+I simply want to fling myself into this business&mdash;heart
+and brain and body.  And, frankly, I've a
+feeling I could give myself to things with a freer
+mind ... as a bachelor.  That's the truth&mdash;for your
+very private ear.  Thirdly and lastly, if we married,
+she ought to be here with you, and I'm doubtful if
+you'd either of you relish that arrangement, lacking
+me to do buffer state.  See?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I do see, very clearly," she answered, regarding
+him with grave tenderness, her elbows on the table,
+her chin in her hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thought you would.  There's only one thing
+worries me.  As my wife&mdash;if the worst happened,
+she'd at least be well provided for.  Seems she has
+literally no money, and a very fair gift for spending it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helen's quick brain&mdash;lightened by her relief&mdash;sprang
+to instant decision.  "You could settle that by adding
+a codicil to your will.  Those investments of father's
+that are not tied up with the place would give her
+quite a comfortable income."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Capital!" he cried, slapping his leg.  "Fool I
+was not to think of it.  Simply forestall my instructions
+about her marriage settlement.  We'll fix it
+up at once and I'll talk things over with her
+to-morrow.  See how she feels about it herself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They discussed details for another half-hour;
+then, in his peremptory fashion, he ordered her to
+bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"God bless you," she whispered as he shed a kiss
+on her hair.  "This afternoon I was the proudest
+mother in England."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"O fool woman&mdash;just because I caught the gift of
+the gab!  With practice I might even degenerate into
+a politician.  Just as well I'm in for a few years of the
+silent service.  Go to sleep quick, and don't let
+yourself be bogey ridden by German devilments."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But though wisdom endorsed his command, she
+disobeyed it flatly.  There was no sleep in her brain;
+and instead of going to bed, she sat down in the
+window-seat, leaned against the woodwork and looked
+out upon the still serenity of garden, terrace, and
+pine wood, softly illumined by an unclouded moon.
+The very peace and beauty of those moonlit August
+nights had an uncanny power of intensifying the
+inner visions that daylight and ceaseless occupation
+kept partially in check.  She could not now look upon
+the moon without seeing the sacked villages, the
+human wreckage of battle that the same impartial
+goddess illumined, over there, on the shell-battered
+fields of Belgium and France.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Earlier in the day her spirit had been uplifted by
+Miss Sorabji's beautiful letter "England in Earnest,"
+by her exhortation, from the Gita, "Think of this not
+as a war, but as a sacrifice of arms demanded of the
+gods."  But now, in the peace and silence of night,
+it was the anguish of the flight from Tirlemont that
+lived before her eyes and chilled her blood.  Too
+vividly, she pictured the flaming town; the rush of
+panic-stricken people; women and children, shot,
+bayoneted, ruthlessly ridden down.  And already
+there were whispers of things infinitely worse than
+killing&mdash;things unnamable, at thought of which
+imagination blenched&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From that great, confused mass of misery there
+emerged the pathetic figure of one fugitive peasant
+woman and five children who stood bewildered in the
+Place de la Gare, crying all of them as if their hearts
+would break.  That morning the German soldiery
+had killed the woman's husband and trampled two
+of her children to death before her face&mdash;a minor
+item in an orgy of horrors.  But it is poignant personal
+detail that pierces the heart: and the acute realisation
+of one mother's anguish brought sudden tears to
+Helen's eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So blurred was the moonlit garden, when she looked
+down into it, that a shadow moving at the end of the
+terrace set her heart fluttering in her throat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Spy hunting and spy mania were in the air.  Almost
+every day brought its crop of tales, credible and
+incredible: horses poisoned wholesale at Aldershot,
+mysterious gun-emplacements, hidden arms and
+ammunition in the least expected places.  Even
+allowing for exaggeration, such rumours were
+sufficiently disturbing.  They gave a creepy, yet rather
+thrilling sense of insecurity to things as perennially
+and unshakably secure as the Bank of England or
+Westminster Abbey.  Nor could even these symbols
+of stability be reckoned immune, with the financial
+world in convulsions and a mysterious fleet of
+Zeppelins threatening to bombard London!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the over-civilised and over-legislated world,
+that came by a violent end in July, 1914, the
+uncertainty of life had been little more than a pious
+phrase, spasmodically justified by events.  Now
+it was an impious fact, vaguely or acutely felt almost
+every hour of the day&mdash;by none more acutely than
+by Helen Forsyth with her quick sensibilities and
+vivid brain.  Even Mark admitted that she was
+keeping her head creditably on the whole; but in
+certain moods she was quite capable of demanding
+a drastic search for gun-emplacements in her own
+grounds or suspecting a secret store of ammunition
+among the ruins of Wynchcombe Abbey, all on the
+strength of a semi-German gardener dismissed years
+ago.  Only last week a suspicious, Teutonic-looking
+individual had come to the back door and put the
+cook "all in a tremor" by asking superfluous questions
+about the neighbourhood.  And now this mysterious
+wanderer in the garden&mdash;at such an hour&mdash;&mdash;!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was on her feet, brushing aside the tears that
+obscured her vision.  But the shadow had vanished
+behind a bush and did not seem disposed to reappear.
+For a second she stood hesitating.  If she called Mark,
+he would either laugh at her or scold her for not
+being in bed.  The creature was probably harmless.
+She would creep down-stairs quietly and explore.  For
+all her nerves and fanciful fears, she was no coward
+in the grain.  Hastily twisting up her hair, she slipped
+on a long opera coat and crept noiselessly down into
+the drawing-room.  There she found that the French
+window leading on to the terrace had been left
+unlocked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How careless of Mark!" she murmured; and, with
+fluttering pulse, stepped out into the moonlight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There he was again!  Summoning all her courage
+she went forward, uncertain even now what she meant
+to say.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The shadowy figure had turned.  It was coming
+towards her.  Then&mdash;with a start of recognition
+she stopped dead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Keith!" she exclaimed softly, and could have
+laughed aloud in her relief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Helen&mdash;what are you doing out here?" he asked, an
+odd thrill in his low voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What are you doing?" she retorted.  "Frightening
+me out of my life!  I saw a suspicious-looking shadow;
+and&mdash;don't laugh at me&mdash;I thought it might be a spy."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And you came down to tackle him alone!  Just
+like you!  Supposing it had been?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh&mdash;thank goodness it's not!  But don't you
+ever give me away."  Helen's laugh ended in an
+involuntary shiver.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Cold?" he asked quickly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No&mdash;no!  Let's walk a little and feel normal."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He moved on beside her, anxious, yet deeply
+content.  Then: "Helen," he said suddenly.  "If
+you're going to let things get on your nerves like this,
+you'll be done for.  Your best chance is to take up
+some absorbing war-work; the harder the better."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What work?  And where?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He caught a note of desperation in her tone.
+"Scrubbing hospital floors?  Or playing about with
+Belgians and invalids here, while Sheila is at Boulogne,
+you scouring France in our car, and Mark in the thick
+of it all?  He wants me to stay here, I know.  But,
+Keith, I simply <i>can't</i>.  What else, though, can a
+useless woman of fifty do?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To start with, she can refrain from calling herself
+useless, which is a libel!  To go on with&mdash;"  He
+paused, regarding her.  The supposed spy was
+meditating a bold suggestion.  "Helen&mdash;could you
+... would you ... come out with me as my
+orderly?  If so, I could confine my activities to the
+Base.  I verily believe you'd find the real thing less
+nerve-racking than the nightmares of an imagination
+like yours.  But, could you stand it, physically?
+And ... would the conventions permit?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her low laugh answered him straight away.  "My
+dear Keith, talk of inspiration!  It would just save
+my soul alive.  I can act infinitely better than I can
+endure.  I should feel nearer to Mark.  And as for the
+conventions, I hanged them all years ago.  What
+harm, if the poor dead things are drawn and
+quartered?"  She checked herself and looked up at him.
+"Will you take your Bible oath that I shouldn't
+simply be in the way?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll take it on as many Bibles as you like to
+produce," he answered, with becoming gravity.  "But
+I'm thinking ... for your sake ... another
+woman....  How about Sheila?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sheila!  Lovely."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Would she give up her precious massage?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If I wanted her she'd give up anything.  But&mdash;the
+massage wouldn't bring her up against the worst
+horrors.  Your work would.  And she's full
+young&mdash;barely three and twenty."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She is that.  Though, if I'm any good at observation,
+I should say the stature of her spirit is far in
+advance of her years.  She gives me the impression
+of great reserve power, that girl.  She never seems
+to put out her full strength, or to waste it in kicking
+against the pricks."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"One for me!" Lady Forsyth murmured meekly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, one for you!  And I make bold to prophesy
+she would be worth five of you in a painful emergency!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He made that unflattering statement in a tone of
+such extraordinary tenderness that she beamed as at a
+compliment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Let the righteous smite me friendly&mdash;when I
+deserve it!  You seem to have made a close study of
+my Sheila.  It only remains to secure her services
+and Mark's consent&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Mother</i>!"  His deep voice called suddenly from
+the window.  "I'm ashamed of you.  Come to bed at
+once!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Coming!" she called back, adding under her
+breath: "Keith, remember I only came down for a
+book.  And you found me locking you out."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then she hurried away, obedient always to the
+voice of her son.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nightmares had been effectually dispelled.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Bel's hope that the War Office would be merciful
+was not fulfilled.  The Juggernaut across the Channel
+would not stand still at any one's bidding.  The
+Great Man who worked day and night, creating new
+armies, had need of every promising semblance of an
+officer he could lay hands on; and Mark's name was a
+recommendation in itself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bel was given little more than a week in which to
+be "heavenly good"; and it must be admitted that
+she made the most of it.  She took kindly, on the
+whole, to Mark's solution of the marriage problem.
+How far her acquiescence was due to his exceeding
+thoughtfulness in the matter of money it might be
+invidious to enquire.  There remained the fact that
+Harry O'Neill&mdash;scenting a possible war wedding&mdash;had
+skilfully put forward her own pronounced views
+on the subject; while, incidentally, spoiling her idol
+more egregiously than ever.  And the girl herself
+leaned towards a more auspicious beginning of her
+married life.  Mark found her oddly superstitious
+on the subject; and, with her gift for evading unpleasant
+facts, she had risen readily to the optimistic
+conviction that the war would be over by Christmas
+or the New Year.  Apparently it did not occur to
+her, or to others of her persuasion, that a short war
+could only spell victory for Germany.  But there
+seemed little use in dispelling an illusion that kept
+her happy; and, in her case, could do no harm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So she clung unchallenged to her comforting belief;
+and, the great question being settled, Mark was free
+to consider other matters.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+First and foremost, there was Keith's amazing
+proposition to enlist Mums&mdash;a project that did not
+square with Mark's private plan for keeping her
+safely wrapped in cotton wool and harmless
+war-activities at Wynchcombe Friars.  Son-like, he had
+scarce realised how infinitely dear she was to him, till
+her eagerness to cross the Channel had driven him to
+consider the possibility in all its bearings.  And the
+inclusion of Sheila in the programme brought to light
+his hidden tenderness for her that seemed in no way
+diminished by his passion for Bel.  Why the deuce
+couldn't the women be reasonable, and stay in England
+where there would be work enough for all?  And what
+business had Keith to go encouraging them?  But so
+plainly were the three enamoured of their idea that
+in the end he had not the heart to damp them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the privacy of his thoughts, he thanked goodness
+that Bel could be trusted not to emulate them;
+though her attitude towards the war was now less
+hostile than it had been.  The very air she breathed
+was impregnated with war-fever, war-talk and
+war-realities.  It was increasingly evident that new
+war-activities were going to become the fashion; and she
+was of those who unquestioningly follow a fashion,
+lead it where it may.  Having no taste for the menial
+work of hospitals or for tending the sick and wounded,
+she had elected to help in some sort of women's work
+engineered by Harry, "the Cause" being temporarily
+extinct.  So far as possible she turned away her eyes
+from beholding and her heart from feeling the full
+measure of the invisible horror, which, to more
+imaginative minds, became too acutely visible and
+audible during that critical last week of August,
+1914.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For by now, across the Channel, the Great Retreat
+had begun.  Days that, at Wynchcombe Friars,
+slipped by all too fast, seemed over there, to have
+neither beginning nor end.  Common standards of
+time were lost in that ceaseless, sleepless nightmare of
+dogged marching and still more dogged fighting,
+whenever Prussian hordes gave the broken remnant
+of an army a chance to turn and smite, as the British
+soldier can smite even in retreat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was from Le Cateau that an officer friend sent a
+pencil scrawl to Mark.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+"It is quite evident that we have taken the knock
+badly.  With any other army one would say we're
+beaten.  But Tommy doesn't understand the word.
+You can only beat him by knocking the life out of
+him.  And even when you think he's dead, chances
+are he'll get up and kick you.  People at home
+simply haven't begun to know what heroes these
+chaps are.  Makes me sick even to think of certain
+supercilious folk, I seem to remember, who thought
+the worst of any man in uniform on principle.  Great
+Scott, they're not fit to lick Tommy's boots."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Mark handed that letter to Bel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There's one in the eye for your precious Maitland,"
+he remarked coolly.  "Copy it out verbatim,
+please, and send it to him with my compliments!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Bel obeyed with exemplary meekness.  She
+had rather objected to the tone of Maitland's last
+letter; and, in her own fashion, she was very much
+impressed.  Heroism, a long way off and entirely
+unconnected with one's self, was an admirable thing
+in man.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+It was near the end of August, when the Channel
+ports were being evacuated and the fall of Paris
+seemed merely a matter of days, that Mark at last
+found his name in the <i>Gazette</i> coupled with that of a
+distinguished Highland regiment; and in record
+time he was ready&mdash;uniform, equipment, parting
+presents and all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Like most of his race and kind, he would have
+preferred an informal departure&mdash;casual "good-byes,"
+as though he were going off on business for a week
+or so.  But he had won the hearts of his people by
+justice, understanding, and the personal touch that
+was a tradition at Wynchcombe Friars: he had inspired
+them, by precept and exhortation, to give of their
+best ungrudgingly; and he could not deny them the
+legitimate thrill of speeding his departure with
+congratulations and cheers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Only on Sunday, his last day, he evaded one ordeal
+by limiting his attendance at church to early service
+with his mother.  Bel had little taste for early rising,
+and Mark did not press the point.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the afternoon he delighted his humbler friends&mdash;wives
+of the gamekeeper, the coachman and the manager
+of his arts and crafts colony&mdash;by calling on them in
+full uniform.  Though he occasionally wore the kilt and
+glengarry at Inveraig, his Hampshire folk had never
+seen him thus attired; and their open admiration was
+so embarrassing that, after several hours of it, he
+returned limp and exhausted, clamouring for whisky
+and soda and the society of Bel, who could
+always be trusted to keep her admiration within
+bounds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To her he devoted the evening; and early on Monday
+the more personal farewells must be said, the
+cheerful, casual note vigorously maintained.  It was
+not "the real thing" yet; and the women, in their
+hearts, prayed that the "the real thing" might be
+deferred for many months to come.  Meantime,
+unless England was favoured with an invasion, he
+would be safe enough on the south-east coast of
+Scotland; and later on, if rooms were available, he would
+permit his mother and Bel to intrude upon his violent
+industry for a week.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Keith drove them all to the station, and behold,
+outside the grey stone gateway, an impromptu
+guard of honour lined the road to Wendover: villagers
+and farm hands, weavers and metal-workers, women,
+children, and ineligible men.  At sight of the motor,
+they broke into shouts and ragged cheers that would
+have moved a heart many degrees less responsive than
+the heart of Mark Forsyth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Drive slower, man," he said to Keith; and, standing
+up in the car, he waved his glengarry&mdash;giving
+them shout for shout&mdash;till he could no more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That vision of him, so standing, with the morning
+light in his eyes, the sun upon his chestnut-red hair
+and his kilt blown back by the wind, remained stamped
+indelibly upon his mother's brain.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0204"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER IV
+</h3>
+
+<p class="intro2">
+  "Hearts that are as one high heart,<br>
+  Withholding nought from doom or bale,<br>
+  Burningly offered up&mdash;to bleed,<br>
+  To bear, to break, but not to fail."<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;LAURENCE BINYON.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+The dream of that coveted week at Mark's war
+station materialised about the middle of September.
+More: it was a success; a blessed memory unspoiled
+by any jarring note, and it brought the two women
+nearer to each other than they had been yet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They found Mark, in charge of a double company
+chiefly armed with broom-sticks, handling his
+Highlanders to some purpose; giving his spare hours to
+revolver practice, with plump German targets in
+view.  His Colonel, who lost no time in making
+friends with Lady Forsyth, spoke of him in glowing
+terms, and gave his women folk every facility for
+seeing the coast defences prepared against the
+promised invasion.  They wandered, shivering inwardly,
+through a maze of genuine trenches, heavily sandbagged,
+that, in the event of a landing, were to be held
+"at all costs."  They inspected cunning entanglements
+of barbed wire on the beach and underground
+forts that looked more like heat bumps on the face of
+the earth than strong defensive positions; and they
+heard amazing stories of spies, though the Government
+had nominally demolished the system.  They
+had tea with half a dozen jilted officers, on a bare deal
+table, in an upper room of a house that had been
+shorn of its furniture to accommodate Mark, with
+two fellow subalterns and three hundred men.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Everything conspired to make those few September
+days an untarnished memory.  The tide of retreat
+had turned.  The miracle had happened and the
+Germans, flung back from the gates of Paris, had
+been brilliantly defeated on the Marne.  India's
+response to the call of her King-Emperor had sent a
+thrill through the whole kingdom: and some impeccable
+authority&mdash;name unknown&mdash;reported hundreds
+of Russians at Ostend.  Hopeful souls dreamed
+again of a swift and decisive issue.  But the Great
+Brain piling up armies in Whitehall still pinned his
+faith on England's "last million men."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In fact, there was only one flaw in the week of their
+content; it passed too soon.  Then the price must
+be paid in the renewed wrench of parting; and for
+the first time Lady Forsyth saw tears in Bel's eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of course they must come again, Mark assured
+them at the last.  "The C.O. has fallen in love with
+Mums!  He'd be heartbroken if I didn't give him
+another chance.  And he's a useful chap to please.
+So that settles it!"
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+But towards the end of September, before there was
+time even to think of another chance, Mark had his
+orders.  A decimated battalion was clamouring for
+reinforcements; and a message flashed to
+Wynchcombe Friars that he would be home next day on
+forty-eight hours leave, picking up Bel in town.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That blunt announcement drove the blood from
+Lady Forsyth's face.  Sheila was back with her
+again; and Keith had just returned from a week's
+absence on business connected with the
+Forsyth-Macnair Car.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He's got his wish," was all she said: and went
+quickly out of the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Next morning they arrived&mdash;the two of them; Mark
+rather defiantly cheerful, Bel more than a little
+subdued.  Lady Forsyth had never liked the girl
+better than in those two days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To the women it seemed hard that so many of his
+precious hours at home must be squandered on business.
+But Mark had to face the fact that he might
+never return; and to make his dispositions accordingly.
+It had always been his wish to emulate his father and
+be practically his own land-agent.  But four years
+of minority and the long absence in Europe had
+obliged him to employ a trustworthy man of
+experience: and he was thankful for it now.  George
+Russell, happily well over forty, had proved as
+capable as he was devoted: which is saying a good deal
+for his capacity.  He possessed, moreover, a shrewder
+business head than either mother or son: and, on
+occasion, to Mark's huge delight, he would assume a
+tenderly protective attitude, as of one whose mission
+in life was to save them from themselves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the matter of Belgian refugees, for instance,
+he regretted to report that Lady Forsyth was not
+sufficiently discriminating.  They were proving, as
+was natural, "a very mixed lot," and Russell had a
+positive flair for the wrong sort.  It was not fair on
+Sir Mark to crowd up his cottages with "foreign
+riff-raff": the deserving would make a quite sufficient
+drain on his limited resources.  The good fellow learnt
+with unconcealed relief that Lady Forsyth would
+soon be going to Boulogne with Miss Melrose and that
+he would be left practically in charge of everything.
+They had decided to lend the house to Sir Richard's
+two sisters chiefly with a view to keeping it available
+for hospitality to officers, wounded or otherwise.
+The little colony of arts and crafts had dwindled
+considerably: but the workshops were not to be
+altogether closed down.  Lady Forsyth was anxious
+to encourage refugee lace-makers, Belgian and
+French.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark himself was thankful for business details that
+relieved the underlying strain.  But he refused on this
+occasion to bid any official "Good-byes."  He had
+taken leave of his people when he joined the army.
+This final wrench was his own most private and
+personal affair as they would doubtless understand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tea on the terrace was a creditably cheerful meal;
+and it was not till near dinner-time that Mark
+managed to slip away by himself for an hour of quiet
+communing with the land he loved&mdash;the woods, the
+river, and the lordly ruins that, for him, were written
+all over with the inner history of his own brief
+twenty-seven years.  Bel had asked him more than once
+how he could bear to leave it all: and to-night, as he
+saw the red sun tangled among his pine tops, that
+question so shook his fortitude that he challenged it
+with another.  Could he bear to think of German
+troops defiling the fair and stately face of it,
+terrorising with torture and outrage, the men and women
+whose welfare was his main concern in life?  Confronted
+with that challenge, the coward question fled
+ashamed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After dinner he had half an hour's talk with Sheila,
+into whose hands he solemnly commended his more
+mercurial mother.  "She's a jewel of price," he added
+frankly, "but in certain moods, she takes some managing.
+And on the whole you're better at it than old
+Keith.  Don't let her crock up from the strain of it
+all.  And write to me.  Promise."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She promised&mdash;and his mind felt more at rest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Later on he took Bel out on to the terrace, where
+they paced up and down in the starlight, talking
+fitfully.  Time was too short for all they had to say:
+and for that very reason they could not say one half
+of it.  Interludes of silence increased.  At last came
+one so prolonged that, by a mutual impulse, they
+came to a standstill, near a low stone bench,
+confronting each other and the inexorable fact.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh Mark&mdash;to-morrow!" Bel breathed unsteadily,
+her dim face close to his.  "It seems impossible."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For answer he took hold of her: and sitting down,
+gathered her on to his knees.  Then, amazed, he heard
+her whisper at his ear: "Darling&mdash;I'm horribly
+afraid.  I keep feeling&mdash;I shall never get you back."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was spoken at last, the fear of perpetual parting
+that knocked at both their hearts.  But the man
+knew that spectre must be ignored.  "I'll come
+back with any luck, my Bel," he said, kissing her, "to
+claim you for good, and worry your life out!  I vote
+we marry the first leave I get."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He passed his hand slowly down her bare arm.
+"Darling, you're cold," he said.  "There's a dew
+and a half falling.  Come in at once.  Are we
+downhearted?&mdash;No!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The light of the hall showed her on the verge of
+tears.  But she pulled herself together and he
+dismissed her with a blessing that meant more to him
+than to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the drawing-room he found Keith alone, with a
+solitary electric light switched on, smoking by the
+open window; a privilege Helen permitted him for the
+sake of his company.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hullo!  Gone&mdash;both of 'em?" Mark asked in surprise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  I ordered them off.  They looked strained
+and tired.  Couldn't read.  Couldn't talk.  Your
+mother has some letters to write, I think.  She left
+word&mdash;would you look in?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Bless her, she takes things beastly hard."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She does," Keith assented briefly: and Mark
+proceeded to fill his pipe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the process Keith watched him, appraising
+his straight, clean manhood and cursing the devilish
+nature of modern war.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently, when Mark had finished with his pipe,
+he spoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Keith, old chap, on the strength of peculiar
+circumstances and the general uncertainty of things,
+I'm going to make an infernally impertinent remark.
+To begin with, Mother's most distractingly on my
+mind.  I've fixed up most things, with a view
+to&mdash;possible contingencies.  But I don't seem able to fix
+up her.  If I'm knocked out she's simply done for.
+Not even this precious work of hers for consolation.
+It all goes to Uncle Everard who'll make an end of
+our colony straight away.  She'll lose everything at a
+stroke, except Inveraig.  And she&mdash;alone there&mdash;&mdash;!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He set his teeth; and Keith passed a long thin hand
+across his eyes.  "That's the tragedy of it," he said;
+adding, with forced lightness, "Where does the
+impertinence come in?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's jolly well coming in now.  Don't bite my
+head off.  Truth is I'm not stone-blind; and just
+lately&mdash;I've been wondering ... why the deuce
+don't you make a match of it?  You and Mums!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Macnair started, and his face looked rather a
+queer colour in the dim light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Great heavens, Mark!  Talk of explosives!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the moment he could get no further; and
+Mark was puzzled.  "You mean&mdash;it's never occurred
+to you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I mean nothing of the sort."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then I bet you <i>do</i> want to bite my head off&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm not ... so sure," he said slowly.  His
+voice was more natural now.  "I always like your
+sledge-hammer directness.  At the same time&mdash;"  He
+rose and paced the length of the room revolving
+that amazing proposition.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If I thought there was a ghost of a chance,"
+Mark persisted, as Keith turned in his stride, "it
+would take a ton weight off my mind."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not to mention mine," Keith answered smiling;
+and when he reached the window he put a hand on
+Mark's shoulder.  "As it seems a case of plain
+speaking to-night, I may as well admit the truth.
+She's been the star of my life for fifteen years&mdash;and
+I'd give all I possess to marry her."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark's eyebrows went up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And she ten years a widow!  Why not have a shot
+at it, old chap, and make this Boulogne trip a sort of
+war honeymoon&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My dear boy!  The pace you young fellows travel!
+And you ignore ... there's Helen herself to be
+reckoned with&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the first time in his life Mark saw the blood
+mount into Keith's face and heard him hesitate over
+his mother's name;&mdash;phenomena that checked his
+fluency a little but rather increased his zeal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, if you don't have a try," he said, "hanged
+if the C.O. won't forestall you.  He's dead smitten.
+Two lovers at fifty&mdash;she ought to be ashamed of
+herself!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Keith seemed no way perturbed by the
+possibility of a rival.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>If</i> she ever marries again," he said quietly, "it
+will be myself.  But, Mark, is it possible you've never
+realised that, for her, your father is still as much
+alive as when he walked this earth.  There's a modest
+percentage of human beings so made, and a good few
+of them are Scots.  For them there is actually neither
+death, nor separation.  I believe your father still
+bars my way, as much as he did when&mdash;I first loved her.
+Of course ... I may exaggerate!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hope you do!"  Mark was deeply moved.
+"She doesn't often speak of him to me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nor to me.  But&mdash;when she does, it's quite clear."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"'M.  Rough luck!  All the same, if the worst
+happens, give me your word you'll have a try
+... for her sake and mine as well as your own.  No one
+would dream there's eight years between you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Keith simply held out his hand and Mark's closed
+on it hard.  The good understanding that had always
+existed between them was complete.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark found his mother writing letters in bed.  He
+had accused her more than once of writing them in her
+bath.  She looked strained and tired, as Keith
+said; but in her blue dressing-jacket with hair
+demurely parted and a thick plait over her shoulder,
+she appeared younger, if anything, than the man he
+had left downstairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Incurable woman!" he said lightly.  "Who's
+your victim this time?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She told him; and while she read out snatches of
+her letter, Mark&mdash;watching her with new eyes&mdash;wondered,
+had she the least inkling?  Would a word
+from him be of any service to Keith?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Curiosity impelled him to talk of the Boulogne
+trip, to enlarge on his confidence in Keith, and even
+to touch on the unconventional character of the whole
+plan.  Neither in look nor tone could he detect a
+glimmer of after-thought or shadow of self-consciousness.
+The causes of her satisfaction were clear as
+daylight: longing to be in the same country as himself:
+candid pleasure in Keith's and Sheila's company and
+her innate love of getting off the beaten track.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's just one of the many beautiful things that a
+genuine, understanding friendship makes possible,"
+she concluded, stamping and sealing her letter: and
+Mark began to feel rather sorry for Keith.  But he
+wisely refrained from any hint of his own knowledge.
+It would probably do no good and would certainly
+spoil her pleasure in going.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Instead, he commandeered her writing board, an
+act of tyranny that would normally have involved a
+fight.  Her unnatural meekness hurt him more sharply
+than any words of love, could she have brought herself
+to speak them.  When he came back to the bed, she
+indicated a little pile of Active Service Compendiums
+and a pocket Red-letter Testament on the table
+beside her.  She had already given him his wrist
+watch and a silver flask.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That <i>from</i> me," she said touching the Book,
+"and those <i>for</i> me.  I shall be hungry for news
+remember and out of touch with Bel, who will get it
+all."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not quite all&mdash;faithless and unbelieving!" he
+answered echoing her lightness, then he added with
+decision.  "You're not coming up to town, Mums;
+not even to the station&mdash;understand?  It'll be bad
+enough having Bel.  But she's cooler all through.
+No matter how brave you are, I can always feel you
+quivering inside.  And I couldn't stand it.  Nor
+could you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She shook her head.  "It was only&mdash;a temptation.
+Not to miss&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A spasm crossed her face and he went down on his
+knees beside her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Darling, if we are going to make fools of
+ourselves," he said huskily.  "I'd better be off.  It's
+near midnight.  Time you were asleep."  No answer;
+and he spoke still lower.  "Give me your blessing,
+Mums&mdash;like when I went to school."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still without speaking she laid her hands on his
+bowed head; and from his heart he echoed her
+passionate silent plea for his safe return.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he stood up and kissed her good night&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For sheer misery and discomfort nothing could
+exceed the actual hour or two before departure.  Bel
+could be with him in his room while he "completed
+his mobilisation."  The rest could only hang about
+aimlessly, making futile talk or inventing futile
+occupations to keep thought at bay.  In the
+background, several maids and a grey-haired butler
+hovered fitfully; and Bobs, a picture of abject misery,
+lay awaiting his master at the foot of the stairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He came at last, in a violent hurry, shouting an
+order to Keith and springing clean over the prostrate
+Bobs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bel followed more leisurely; flushed a little, but
+controlled.  Then the hovering servants came forward
+and Helen slipped quietly into her husband's study.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There, at last, Mark came to her&mdash;followed closely
+by a tailless Bobs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Somehow she contrived to smile.  Then his arms
+were round her, crushing her to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"God bless you," he whispered.  "Don't fret.
+It's going to be all right.  And&mdash;if it isn't ... it'll
+<i>still</i> be all right."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he kissed her again and let her go.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From the threshold he waved to her, smiling resolutely,
+though tears stood in his eyes.  She waved back
+to him.  The door shut between them.  He was gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As she stood motionless, fighting back her grief,
+she was startled by that sharp, familiar pang in the
+region of her heart: and a momentary darkness as if
+a raven's wing had brushed across her eyes.  She
+shivered and kneeled hastily down to comfort the
+desolate Bobs, while her tears fell, unchecked now,
+upon his rough brown head.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0205"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER V
+</h3>
+
+<p class="intro">
+"Here is the hard paradox: war ... truly devilish, bestial,
+senseless thing, produces in masses&mdash;as peace distinctly does not
+produce them&mdash;brothers and sisters to Christ."&mdash;G. B. DAWAR.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Wynchcombe Friars without Mark was no place
+to tarry in; but there seemed no end to the delays;
+and Keith turned even these to good account by
+teaching Sheila to drive the Forsyth-Macnair car.
+Two drivers with one orderly would get through twice
+the work.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was near the middle of October when, at last,
+they found themselves speeding towards Folkestone.
+Keith, who had laid aside philosophy "for the duration
+of the war," delighted in his own small ark of
+salvation as a Captain delights in his ship.  From "stem
+to stern" she was as perfect as skill and money could
+make her; fitted up with four stretchers and bedding;
+crammed to the limit of her capacity with first aid
+appliances and a minimum of luggage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here and there autumn had laid a fiery finger on the
+woods.  Birches and elms were tipped with gold.
+Otherwise the October sun riding in a cloudless heaven
+suggested high summer.  Mark had been gone nearly
+two weeks.  Two brief cheerful letters assured his
+mother he was alive and well.  Till she could see him
+again, those simple facts were all that vitally
+concerned herself; though pessimists prophesied invasion
+by Zeppelin and transport; and away over there&mdash;unseen,
+yet acutely felt&mdash;Belgium continued her
+heroic stand against the all-devouring, all-defiling
+German Army.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The fall of Antwerp, pronounced impregnable,
+had resounded through Europe like the knell of doom.
+For a time, even the bravest were shaken with dismay
+and the stream of refugees increased daily.  The
+streets of Folkestone overflowed with that pitiful
+flotsam of wrecked cities.  Some wept; some cursed;
+some prayed; but the prevailing expression was a
+terrible stunned indifference, as though shock on
+shock had hammered them into automata that
+could move and eat and sleep, but could no longer
+feel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In Boulogne&mdash;when they reached it&mdash;the flotsam
+of wrecked battalions was more in evidence.  Things
+were still primitive here as regards organisation: but
+already the place was an English colony.  The British
+Red Cross Society was beginning to make things
+move and owners of private cars were doing splendid
+service.  To these were now added the unrelated
+trio from Wynchcombe Friars.  But their first
+objective was Rouen, where a young Stuart nephew
+lay badly wounded, craving for the sight of a face
+from home.  His invalid mother could not get to
+him; so Lady Forsyth went in her stead, only to find
+on arrival that the boy had been dead an hour.  For
+the sake of that faraway mother she asked to see him,
+though privately she dreaded the ordeal.  She was
+aware, suddenly, of a very unheroic shrinking from
+close contact with the awful actualities of war.  But
+that shrinking in no way affected her zeal for the
+work in hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+News that a train-load of casualties was expected
+that evening sent them full speed to the station; but
+it was dusk when they arrived to find the process
+of unloading begun.  At the entrance, a group of
+Red Cross officials stood talking and laughing,
+hardened by habit to the painful scene.  As the car drew
+up they crowded round, admiring it and questioning
+Macnair, while tragic burdens were being carried
+past them in the half light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helen, too overwrought to make allowances,
+wondered how Keith had the patience to answer them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently, her attention was caught by a number of
+black shadows, like wheelbarrows abnormally large
+and high.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What are those?" she asked a porter, and
+discovered that they were severely wounded men on
+wheeled stretchers either too brave or too exhausted
+to utter a sound of complaint.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At that she could restrain herself no longer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Keith," she exclaimed, flagrantly interrupting
+a Medical Authority with a passion for cars.  "Why
+are those unfortunate men kept hanging about in this
+noisy place?  Can't we get four of them away?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Medical Authority checked her impatience
+in a tone of mild reproof.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Those fellows are all right where they are, Lady
+Forsyth," he said.  "They're not fit to be moved
+off their stretchers.  So we're waiting for the trams.
+If you like to back into the station, you may pick
+up some milder cases who'll be glad of a lift."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They backed in accordingly and picked up two
+maimed men and a remarkably cheerful subaltern
+with his left arm in a sling and a bandage across one
+eye.  As they passed out, Keith offered to return
+for another load; and to Helen's disgust, the offer was
+politely declined.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By the time they reached the field hospital&mdash;a collection
+of marquees, fitted up with electric light&mdash;it
+was nearly ten o'clock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Quite early; but we don't seem to be <i>wanted</i>; so
+I suppose we must go to bed," Helen remarked with
+doleful emphasis, as they re-settled the car.  "I
+don't know what you think about it, Keith.  <i>I</i> feel
+distinctly snubbed.  Four out of three hundred!
+What's that?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A beginning&mdash;and no bad one!" Keith answered
+placidly, filling his pipe.  "Fanshawe says if we report
+ourselves at Boulogne we shall get all the work we
+want.  There's heavy fighting on the north.  A
+big battle developing for Ypres and Calais."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To Boulogne they returned accordingly: and had
+no cause this time to feel either snubbed or superfluous.
+There was still a famine of cars at the Base and the
+wounded were arriving in thousands: their bodies
+mangled and mutilated; their spirits, in the main,
+unquenched.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Macnair and his party drove up to their Hotel at
+noon: and their greeting from the Red Cross Authority
+was very much to the point.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All available cars wanted immediately at the Gare
+Maritime.  Better get some lunch first."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That lunch was of the briefest.  Keith dumped
+their luggage in the hall without so much as asking if
+there were rooms to be had.  Helen did not even open
+the coveted letter from Mark, till they were back in
+the motor, speeding towards the bare unsheltered
+Gare, where impromptu and comfortless hospital
+trains debouched their tragic loads.  Mercifully
+the sun of that miraculous autumn still shone
+unclouded; and, by the time autumn gave place to the
+wettest winter in decades, better arrangements had
+been made.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All that afternoon they worked, unceasingly, and
+late into the night.  Back and forth, back and forth
+between station and hospital; jolting inevitably over
+railway lines, and a strip of merciless cobble pavement
+that, for men with shattered limbs, hurriedly dressed,
+involved several minutes of excruciating agony.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Keith, couldn't they possibly take up that cruel
+bit of pave?" Helen pleaded after their seventh
+journey with three men at death's door.  "Even a
+raw road would be better than those stones."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll move heaven and earth to get it improved,"
+he assured her, little guessing that he had pledged
+himself to a labour of Hercules.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+By the time they could take breath and think about
+finding beds, they were all dead weary, sustained
+only by the knowledge that they had given their mite
+of service to the utmost of their power.  In Mark's
+letter, which Helen had scarcely found time to read,
+there was a sentence on this head that had haunted
+her brain throughout those strenuous hours.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh Mums, if only the good casual folk at home
+could be made to see even the half of what we see in the
+way of wanton destruction, and calculated brutality,
+wherever the gentle German has left his trail, they'd
+possibly begin to realise the powers of evil we're up
+against in this war and things in general would march
+to a different tune.  But they can't see.  That's the
+trouble.  And hearing about such things isn't the
+same at all.  If we're ever going to win through hell
+to human conditions again it won't be merely by
+signing cheques and making speeches, but by the
+individual personal service of every man and woman
+in whatever capacity; and I'm proud to feel you three
+are giving it like Trojans.  God bless you all!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stood gleaning a few more scraps under an
+electric light, when Keith came up to say he had
+secured a room for her and Sheila; and a friendly Irish
+doctor had offered him a bed in his hospital train.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm in great luck with my two assistants," he
+added smiling down at her eager, tired face.  "Sheila
+betters my expectation, which is saying a good deal.
+Her self-possession to-day astonished me.  She'd
+have the nerve for advance ambulance work in the
+firing line, I do believe.  But I'm glad we've got her
+safe here."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He glanced towards her where she sat at a writing-table
+scribbling a hurried letter to Mark in praise
+of their mutually beloved Mums.  Then he went up
+and touched her shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good night, Sheila," he said.  "Get to bed sharp,
+both of you.  I'll call for you to-morrow."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We'll be ready early," she answered looking up at
+him; and he discovered, to his surprise, that her eyes
+were swimming in tears.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+There was a certain monotony about the days of
+unremitting work that followed; a monotony tinged
+with its own peculiar high lights and shadows; with
+beauty and terror, fortitude and anguish, the incoming
+and outgoing pulse-beat of life at the Base.  Scarcely a
+day passed without some minor incident, some flash
+of human revelation that neither Keith nor his
+orderlies would forget while they lived.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For Helen&mdash;with every nerve responsive to the
+suffering around them&mdash;the strain of it all proved no
+light matter; yet, in retrospect she counted those
+terrible days as among the richest experiences of her
+life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To her it was distracting that wounded men should
+suffer additional miseries from the fact that even in
+two and a half months of war it had been impossible to
+cope with all the complex needs of the situation.
+Hospitals were few and quite inadequate.  The magnificent
+ambulance trains of later days were still in the
+workshops at home; while untiring men on the spot
+did the best they could with the high, comfortless
+passenger coaches of France.  Even the more luxurious
+sleeping carriages were too cramped for the ingress
+and egress of badly wounded men: and when, at last,
+these were landed, like so many bales of goods, on the
+unsheltered platform of the Gare, shortage of
+ambulance cars and trained stretcher-bearers added the
+finishing touch to their nightmare journey.  But soon
+after Keith's arrival the zeal and organisation of the
+British Red Cross began to make themselves felt, in
+this respect as in others.  Every ambulance that could
+be raised in London was rushed across to Boulogne;
+till in a few days there were eighty of one kind or
+another plying between train and hospital and ship.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For all that, there was still need of superhuman
+exertion to cope, even inadequately with the terrible
+stream of wounded; the back wash as it were, from
+the Homeric struggle round Ypres.  In that region, the
+Belgians were making their last desperate stand, and
+war-worn British Divisions,&mdash;haggard, sleepless,
+cruelly depleted&mdash;were still miraculously holding their
+own against Army Corps on Army Corps of fresh
+German troops heartened by an overwhelming superiority
+in guns and shells.  There&mdash;during those awful
+days&mdash;whole battalions of the finest troops on earth
+practically ceased to exist; and thence came the main
+influx of comfortless, over-crowded trains.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Steadily the tale of wounded swelled, till it reached
+an average of two thousand a day.  And what were
+eighty cars among so many?  Little better than the
+five loaves and two small fishes in Galilee: and here
+was no hope of miraculous intervention.  The
+outstanding miracle of that golden October&mdash;when
+England neither knew her peril nor the full cost of her
+salvation&mdash;was the superhuman fortitude of those
+that were broken on the wheel and the untiring
+energy of those who served them in the teeth of baffling
+conditions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Day after day the open platform was thronged
+with men on stretchers in all stages of mental and
+bodily collapse; British, Indian, French, Belgian,
+German&mdash;brothers all, for the moment, in suffering
+if in nothing else.  Some stared wildly and talked
+nonsense; some were apathetic; some incurably
+cheerful; though often their wounds had not been
+dressed for days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lack of trained stretcher-bearers was a serious
+difficulty till St. John's Ambulance Society came to the
+rescue.  Porters, willing but unskilful, did what they
+could.  Keith himself, and others like him, helped to
+carry scores of men.  From early morning till near
+midnight the cars of rescue ran to and fro; but in
+spite of every effort there were unavoidable delays.
+Men died there on the stretchers, or in draughty
+cars, while red-tape regulations kept them waiting
+outside hospitals and ships.  And that cruel strip
+of pavé remained unsmoothed, though Keith had
+pressed the point with unauthorised persistence.
+And Helen cursed&mdash;so far as her ladyhood permitted&mdash;every
+time they crossed it with patients in the last
+extremity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The unceasing rush of work left small leisure for
+nightmares or even for anxiety; but the strain and
+pain of it was taxing her nerves to breaking-point.
+Always, as they drew near the familiar crowded
+station, there sprang the inevitable question: "Will
+it be Mark this time?"  But though the passing
+days brought many from his regiment, Mark was not
+found among them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As for Sheila, her sensitive spirit felt the test more
+acutely than either of the elders, who kept watchful
+eyes on her, were allowed to suspect.  Only by clinging
+desperately to her childhood's code of courage could
+she save herself, at times, from the ignominy of
+collapse.  It was sustaining, too, to feel that Keith
+trusted her, that Helen relied on her; and Mark's
+occasional letters&mdash;full of a brotherly tenderness that
+showed little in his speech&mdash;made it seem possible
+to win through anything without flinching visibly.
+The fact that she could face this inferno of pain and
+death and mental anguish without a sense of
+bitterness or rebellion was more of an asset than she knew.
+It was, in fact, the keystone of her character, the
+secret of her spiritual poise.  For to accept, actively
+to accept, spells capacity to transcend; but that she
+had still to discover.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They had little time, any of them, for abstract or
+personal thought.  The war, and its pressing demands
+on them constituted their life.  Keith had secured
+a small private sitting-room, where they could enjoy
+an occasional evening of quiet and rest.  But as
+work was seldom over till near eleven, such oases
+were rare indeed.  At times their heads felt stunned
+with the eternal rattling to and fro, their hearts
+numbed by contact with the awful harvest of a
+modern battlefield.  But on the whole they loved
+their work, and would not have been otherwhere for
+a kingdom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They grew skilled in the art of talking the men's
+minds away from their sufferings: and Sheila&mdash;"Mouse"
+though she was&mdash;showed so notable a gift
+for this form of spiritual healing, that Lady Forsyth
+finally christened her "Queen of the Poor Things."  Some
+mother-quality in her touch and tone seemed to
+go straight to their hearts.  Men who left the station
+groaning and clenching their teeth, to keep the curses
+back, would surprisingly soon be conjured into
+recounting their adventures, or better still, talking of
+wives and children at home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Keith himself confessed that he had never properly
+appreciated the British Tommy till he carried him
+wounded; and Helen lost her heart a dozen times
+over.  More than once when they chanced upon men
+shattered and bandaged past human recognition,
+she came very near losing her head: but only once did
+she disgrace herself by fainting outright.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On that occasion, Keith carried her straight back to
+their Hotel, laid her on the sofa and stayed by her
+till she was sufficiently recovered to feel very much
+ashamed of herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Promise I won't do it again," she assured him
+as he stood leaning over her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, that you certainly won't," he said sternly.
+"If ever you do, I shall pack you straight off home.
+To-night, for a punishment, you'll go early to bed.
+Sheila will be quite safe with me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Argument and rebellion were useless.  Moreover,
+she was honestly exhausted; and before ten o'clock
+she was sound asleep.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But even weariness could not break the habit of
+short rest; and by one of the morning she was
+amazingly wide awake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some distant sound had roused her, and now it drew
+nearer:&mdash;footsteps and voices; men cheering and
+singing of "La Gloire" and "La Mort."  Nearer still
+they came, tramping along the pavement, till they
+were almost under her open window.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then she was aware of a discordant note in that
+gallant chorus.  One voice, raised in terror and
+remonstrance, was trying to dominate those other
+voices that were obviously shouting it down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"J'ai peur!  Mon Dieu, camarades, j'ai peur!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The words reached her distinctly now.  But the
+rest, unheeding, sang louder than ever of "la mort"
+and "la gloire."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Possibly they were sorry for him.  The coward
+is the unhappiest of men.  Yet he too being "enfant
+de la patrie" must go, even as others went: and
+Helen Forsyth, hearing him go, found the tears
+streaming down her face&mdash;not for the coercion of one
+reluctant citizen, but for the unending horror and
+misery of it all: the fear and the anguish and the
+calculated cruelty that were so infinitely worse than
+death.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila, sleeping the profound sleep of healthily
+exhausted youth, stirred not an eyelash even when the
+noise was at its height.  But, for Helen, that pitiful
+interlude had put an end to rest; had opened the
+door to nightmare memories and her own most private
+fears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Since the long letter from Mark, that had greeted
+her on arrival, there had been one barren field
+postcard: and even that was ten days old.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And away there, in the trenches, the struggle
+seemed to wax fiercer every hour....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The blank parallelogram of her window gleamed
+pale grey before, in spite of herself, she fell asleep.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0206"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER VI
+</h3>
+
+<p class="intro2">
+  "They stand to be her sacrifice,<br>
+  The sons this Mother flings like dice,<br>
+  To face the odds and brave the Fates...."<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;GEORGE MEREDITH.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+The strain of Mark's sudden silence told increasingly
+upon the three of them.  It was tacitly assumed
+that postal arrangements were disorganised.  Each
+hoped that the others believed in that consoling
+fiction; but privately, they were sceptics all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helen continued to post his paper and her own thick
+envelope every other day in the hope that he was
+still to be found somewhere in the terrible maze of
+trenches that drew England's best and bravest as a
+magnet draws steel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meantime, they were thankful for unremitting
+work; for the constant movement and interest of life
+at the Base.  Young officers, eager for action, might
+be bored to extinction by a few weeks in camp or in
+one of the crowded hotels; but an observer, blessed
+with humour and a large love of human nature, could
+not fail to find at every turn food for thought, for
+laughter and for tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+War is neither all horror, nor all heroism, or it
+could not be waged by flesh and blood.  Soldiers who
+can die like gods, or fight as the beasts that perish,
+are, in the intervals, men of like passions with their
+kind.  And genuine soldiers were scarce among those
+who now poured into Boulogne, to fill the gaps in that
+dangerously thin line round Ypres: Territorials and
+schoolmasters, clergymen and clerks, lords of commerce
+and lords of the land; dissimilar in almost every
+essential, yet welded together by one common resolve,
+one common faith:&mdash;a crusade indeed!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the manifold needs of a host undreamed of by
+the wildest, wickedest "militarists," demanded the
+existence of that other army chiefly congregated at the
+Base;&mdash;doctors, nurses, chaplains, ambulance folk,
+owners of private cars, and those sorrowful birds of
+passage&mdash;relations of dying or dangerously wounded
+men.  On the quays, in streets and hotels they
+thronged, those incongruous fragments of the world's
+greatest drama; and Lady Forsyth never tired of
+watching them or listening to their snatches of talk.
+Neither weariness, nor nightmare visions, nor anxiety,
+even, could blunt the edge of her keen interest in
+the human panorama.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, Sheila, my lamb," she exclaimed one evening
+after a day of very varied emotions, "aren't people&mdash;all
+sorts and kinds of them&mdash;passionately interesting?
+Even when I'm laid on the uttermost shelf, I shall
+still be always peeping over the edge!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And you'll always find me peeping up at you!"
+the girl answered, smiling at the quaint conceit.
+"It's simply wonderful, being with you&mdash;through
+all this!"
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+A temporary lull in the stream of wounded was
+followed, too soon, by a renewed rush of hospital trains
+filled to overflowing; the harvest of a fresh German
+onslaught.  But by this time there were more cars
+and more stretcher-bearers.  Ambulance trains,
+splendidly equipped, were being hurried out from England;
+and the customs sheds at the station had become a
+great shelter, roughly partitioned into dressing-stations
+for those who had need of immediate care.
+From this seed of voluntary effort there sprung up, in
+time, a big stationary hospital, but by then the
+Forsyth-Macnair car was needed elsewhere.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meantime, in every effort to minimise the sufferings
+of the men he served, Keith was actively to the fore.
+He even talked of running a second car.  Helen herself
+was amazed at his energy and versatility&mdash;he whom
+she had hitherto regarded as a man wedded entirely
+to books and thought.  But among all the surprises
+of a war rich in surprise, good and evil, were none
+more remarkable than such unlooked-for revelations
+of human capacity and character.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still no sign of Mark, though there were many
+discoveries, sad and glad, on that ever-crowded
+platform: and one morning, on a day they did not soon
+forget, Sheila made a find on her own account that
+concerned them all more nearly than they knew.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a brilliant morning.  Scarcely a cloud in the
+sky or a ripple on the sea; and they reached the
+station early to find a train had arrived before daylight.
+Stretcher cases had been left undisturbed; but those
+who could walk were strolling or limping up and
+down in the sun.  Others, more seriously damaged,
+lay about in groups on the ground or propped against
+bales of goods; great gaunt Highlanders, Gunners
+and Guardsmen, Indians and Canadians&mdash;their coats,
+boots, and puttees caked with the mud of Flanders;
+heads and limbs swathed in bandages bright with
+blood; rough jokes on their lips; a ready gleam of
+laughter in their tired eyes.  And the sun beat down
+upon them all; and the last of the flies gave them no
+peace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a sight to contract the heart in pity and to
+lift it in pride of common human manhood that
+could so smilingly suffer and endure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There must have been seven hundred of them, all
+told.  To dress their wounds and remove them would
+be an arduous day's work; and only by very special
+efforts could they be fed.  Red Cross and V.A.D. ladies
+hurried to and fro with food and hot drinks and
+words of welcome, hardly less acceptable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Keith went off, at once, to help with the stretchers;
+and for a space the three were separated.  Helen
+promptly attached herself to a Highlander whose
+face was obliterated in bandages, save for his mouth
+and one eye: and very soon Sheila came hurrying up
+to them, two spots of colour in her pale cheeks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mums, <i>who</i> d'you think I've found?&mdash;No, not
+Mark," she added quickly.  "It's my very 'poor
+thing,' Mr. Seldon, of all people on earth.  I knew
+he'd taken up motor cycling keenly; but I didn't
+dream he'd volunteer for despatch riding.  Just
+shows you can never label people off-hand.  It
+seems he had furlough due and wanted to be useful;
+so he's been running to and fro, in this awful fighting,
+and had his right leg smashed for a reward.  When
+your Kiltie's had his breakfast, do come and be introduced."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Kiltie's one eye beamed at the familiar allusion
+from so engaging a morsel of girlhood; and he nearly
+choked himself in a gallant effort to empty his steaming
+cup of coffee at a gulp.  But Sheila noticed
+nothing.  She was engrossed in her regenerate "poor
+thing": rather more so than Lady Forsyth quite
+approved.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She, herself, found him not unattractive; dark as a
+gypsy, with thoughtful eyes that followed Sheila
+wherever she moved.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That <i>you</i> should have found me!  The most
+amazing luck!" he kept repeating, at intervals,
+apparently taking it for granted that Lady Forsyth
+understood the situation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, indeed, Helen caught herself wondering was it
+out of pure consideration for him that the girl chiefly
+confined her ministrations to men in his neighbourhood?
+She even came back to ask for details of the culminating
+adventure that had possibly cost him a leg.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There's just a shred of hope they may save it,"
+he added philosophically.  "And I'm hanging on to
+that.  Anyway it's not likely now, I'd be quarrelling
+with my fate!  I told you I was coming over.  Didn't
+you get my letter?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No.  It'll probably follow me here.  Now&mdash;I
+mustn't stay talking.  Shall I ask Mr. Macnair to
+get you for our car?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do; angel of mercy!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Snatches, in this vein, Helen overheard as she came
+and went upon her own errands and her swift brain
+sprang half-way to meet possible developments not
+entirely to her liking.  Still&mdash;she was sorry for the
+man and glad when Keith secured him as a passenger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They left him finally at the hospital where Mona
+was beginning to earn distinction; and Sheila promised
+to look him up later.  Then back they rattled again
+to that eternally familiar Gare.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This time they lighted on Maurice Lenox&mdash;not
+wounded, but shivering with fever, his nerves all ajar
+from sleeplessness and shell fire.  The hope that he
+might give them news of Mark was soon extinguished.
+Maurice had run across him earlier in the
+day, and had since heard great things of his capacity
+and courage; but where the regiment was at present
+he had not the ghost of an idea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Maurice himself was a rather damaged edition
+of the lively clever boy they had known at Inveraig.
+He declared that the horrors of war "made in
+Germany" exceeded the wildest cinematographs in his
+brain.  He had only been "forward" three times for
+training purposes; but every time "the luck" had
+been against him.  He thanked his stars he had got
+out of it alive; and had not the remotest desire to
+go back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After her talk with him, Helen wilted visibly; and
+by the end of their strenuous morning she looked so
+white and strained that Keith prescribed an afternoon
+of complete rest.  The station work was too urgent
+for Sheila and himself to cry off altogether; but they
+would come back early and cheer her loneliness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helen accepted her fate the more readily because,
+from the moment of waking, her spirit had been
+shadowed by a too-familiar sensation.  Some large
+event was hovering near.  For this reason she felt
+reluctant to leave the Hotel; and when the waiter
+brought in her tea-tray with two envelopes on it,
+she did not even need to look at the writing.  Her
+instincts&mdash;as Mark had once said&mdash;were infallible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The second letter was from his Colonel; but that
+could wait.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Page on close written page she scanned, while absently
+sipping her tea; till her heart brimmed over afresh
+with love and pride; and gratitude that, in spite of
+all, she had him still.  She could not help contrasting
+the tone of his letter with the talk of Maurice that
+morning.  No insistence, here, on horrors, or on hell
+fire; no easy optimism, either, as regards the gigantic
+task in hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Every day makes it clearer," he wrote, "that we've
+a thundering hard job before us and that our line
+round here is dangerously thin.  Officers and men are
+about equally exhausted by the long strain and
+insufficient reliefs; and enemy movements all suggest
+that they're cheerfully reckoning to extinguish us in
+time for Christmas in Town.  Bless their innocent
+hearts!  They've yet to reckon with Tommy's talent
+for hanging on with his back teeth, even when a good
+few of them have been extracted!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mums, he's simply a human miracle; and we're
+all head over ears in pride of him, though we don't
+let on to any great extent.  We've had a welcome
+breather in billets the last three days.  But there
+are big doings on; and I expect we'll soon go forward
+again.  Look out for a field PC and be of good heart
+till you get one.  'Who dies if England lives?'  That's
+the only sane way to look at it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Just had three ripping letters from you and Sheila
+and Bel.  It does a man's heart good, in the midst
+of all this, to get such delicious whiffs of home.  You
+sound a shade anxious.  But fretting's waste of
+strength, little Mums, and your Highland laddie's
+going strong.  The C.O.'s a mighty man of valour.
+Talks of making me Adjutant when Collins takes up
+his staff job; all for love of you, I'll swear!
+And&mdash;talking of love, I've one word for your very private
+ear.  If old Keith should suddenly startle you by an
+offer of marriage, don't say 'No' if you can help
+it.  Mind, I'm not sure if he will.  But I've reason
+to suppose he may.  What matter, after all, the
+difference in years&mdash;you that, at fifty, can still behave
+like a child of ten!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helen read and re-read those amazing words in a
+very mixed frame of mind.  An offer of marriage&mdash;!
+Mark's imagination was running away with him.
+More than once of late she had wondered if Keith
+cared for Sheila.  But herself&mdash;!  Impossible.  Undeniably
+it warmed her heart, true lover of love that she
+was: yet Keith was right.  She could still, at times, feel
+that Other so near her, in spirit, as to make the idea of
+a second husband seem little short of sacrilege.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dropping Mark's letter in her lap, she covered
+her face.  "Richard&mdash;Richard!" she whispered, and
+yielded herself to the vague yet intimate sense of his
+presence, that gradually enfolded her and as gradually
+faded, leaving her doubly alone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By way of banishing ghosts she opened the Colonel's
+letter and read, with uplifted heart, his sincere and
+soldierly praise of her son whom he hoped very soon to
+secure for his Adjutant.  The first moment it was
+possible, he added, Mark should have a few days'
+leave.  No man in the battalion had earned a better
+right to it.  Moreover, in the recent fighting, he had
+shown such conspicuous gallantry that his name was
+to be sent up for a decoration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such news made royal atonement for anxiety;
+and she was still reading when there came a knock at
+the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Entrez!" she said casually, supposing the man
+had come for her tea-things.  Then she found that
+he was holding a salver towards her; and on the
+salver lay a telegram.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At sight of it all the wheels of her being stopped
+dead.  Everything seemed slipping away from her.
+Mechanically, she took the envelope and rose to her
+feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The waiter, too often a messenger of sorrow, vanished
+swiftly: and Helen Forsyth stood alone reading, with
+dazed iteration, the bald announcement that the
+War Office regretted to report her son Lieutenant
+Sir Mark Stuart Forsyth "Wounded and Missing,
+believed killed."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her immobility was the measure of her anguish;
+and the shock was the greater coming at a moment
+when his voice had almost sounded in her ears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still mechanically, she picked up that precious
+letter and, for the first time, looked at the date.  It
+was a week old.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Life without Mark&mdash;&mdash;!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She pressed a hand across her tearless eyes: and
+while she stood so, the door opened again.  She started
+violently.  A crazy hope of reprieve flashed through
+her brain.  But it was only Keith.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The paper she held and the look in her eyes
+enlightened him: and before he could master his voice,
+she had recovered hers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Keith&mdash;it's <i>come</i>!" she cried holding out the
+telegram.  "God help us!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A sudden faintness overwhelmed her, and she put
+both hands to her head.  Keith saw her sway just
+perceptibly; and without an instant's hesitation he
+put an arm round her shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Helen&mdash;my dear," was all he could say, as she
+leaned limply against him, shaken with sharp, tearless
+sobs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once, in despair at the sheer impotence of speech,
+he laid his hand on her head; a moment&mdash;no more.
+Then very gently he led her to the sofa, and she lay
+there, her rebel spirit broken by this last and cruelest
+blow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He picked up the telegram; re-read it, and put it
+on the mantelpiece.  Its work was not yet done.
+The news would hit Sheila hard.  And Miss Alison.
+Had Helen thought of that?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was thinking of it now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Keith," she sat upright, her eyes tearless still.  "I've
+just remembered&mdash;poor Bel!  Shall we wire or write?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A letter would be more merciful," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very well.  I don't know how to write it.  But
+I'll try."  She sat silent, gazing at a photograph of
+Mark in uniform.  Then: "Keith&mdash;he <i>is alive</i>.  I
+am sure of it," she said slowly in a voice of impressive
+quietness and conviction.  "While I was lying there
+something&mdash;Someone told me.  If he were not, he
+would have come to me, as Derek came.  With all
+three of them, I had the warning.  So, unless he does
+come, I shall cling to my conviction."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes:&mdash;cling to it," he said.  "You've always
+seen true.  Meantime, I'll take the car to the Front
+and not cease from searching, till I find him or some
+trace of him.  You two must go home at once."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Home</i>&mdash;?" She shivered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Have faith&mdash;and patience," he said gently.
+"Throw all your energy into some sort of work less
+painful than the work here."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But Sheila will hate leaving it.  Her whole heart
+is given to the wounded."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A very large part of it is given to you.  And now&mdash;you
+are one of them; one of the wounded in spirit,
+whose names appear in no casualty lists."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last, to his relief, he saw tears in her eyes.
+She brushed them away and rose to her feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I must try and write to Bel.  And oh&mdash;there were
+letters from him and the Colonel.  You must read
+them&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly she remembered&mdash;and went hot all over
+at thought of how he had held her while she was
+immersed in grief.  Dexterously abstracting Mark's
+last sheet, she handed him the rest and went back
+to the escritoire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a while Keith sat watching her, love and pain
+and pity contending in his heart.  Then he opened
+the letters.  It was the first time she had given him
+one of Mark's to read.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hers to Bel scarcely filled a sheet.  But it took a
+long time to write; and before it was finished, Sheila
+came in, visibly refreshed by an hour's talk with
+Mona and Seldon, who was not to lose his leg.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hearing her step, Lady Forsyth put down her pen
+and covered her face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Keith, feeling like an executioner, again took up
+the telegram that was propped against a vase; and
+involuntarily Sheila put up a hand as if he had struck
+her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So soon?" she breathed, looking beyond him at
+Helen's bowed head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not the worst&mdash;yet," Keith answered handing her
+the paper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She took in the contents at a glance; and for a long
+minute she stood gazing at it; lifeless as a statue;
+white to the lips, their first tremor resolutely stilled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently she came back, as it were, from a long way
+off.  "We can still hope&mdash;and pray," she said just
+above her breath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, turning from him, she hurried over to Helen;
+and Keith went out, leaving them together&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Next morning there were hasty preparations to catch
+the midday boat.  Keith's idea had been to cross with
+them and see them safe on English ground: but in the
+end there was no resisting Helen's urgent plea that he
+would not waste so many precious hours on them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She promised him a telegram from Dover, and
+another from Wynchcombe Friars.  Then, Helen-like,
+when it came to the actual pang of parting, she
+impulsively clutched his arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh&mdash;<i>take care</i> of yourself," she said with smothered
+intensity.  "Both of you gone: and we
+alone&mdash;waiting&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"For the fulfilment of your conviction," he
+reminded her.  "Be sure <i>I</i> shall not rest till I have
+found him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you suppose I doubt that?" she asked, a
+new tenderness in her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But even to him she could not speak her inmost
+fear&mdash;"What if Mark were wounded and in German
+hands?"
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0207"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER VII
+</h3>
+
+<p class="intro2">
+  "Your hearts are lifted up; your hearts<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That have foreknown the utter price;<br>
+  Your hearts burn upward, as a flame<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of splendour and of sacrifice,"<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>To Women</i>&mdash;LAWRENCE BINYON.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Wynchcombe Friars again&mdash;with the spirit of Mark
+haunting them in every room and at every turn of the
+grounds.  Most intolerable were the little intimate
+things that conjured up his presence, the very tone
+of his voice: and&mdash;to crown all, there was Bobs.  His
+ecstatic greeting, the sobbing squeals of joy that Mark
+so loved to hear; his rush beyond them, obviously
+in search of his master; shook the foundations of their
+fortitude.  Not until now did Helen discover how
+much virtue had gone out of her: and the reaction,
+while it lasted, was a nightmare of which she
+afterwards felt heartily ashamed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila, thankful to be alone with her at such a time,
+quietly took the reins of government into her small,
+capable hands.  On the day after their arrival she
+put Lady Forsyth to bed and practically kept her there
+for a week, soothing and stimulating, with massage,
+the nerves of her head and her spirit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had the peculiar love of the born healer for all
+things hurt or unhappy; and the reserve force in her,
+detected by Keith, had kept the poise of her spirit
+unshaken through all.  But the hovering shadow of a
+smile no longer haunted her lips.  She had learnt,
+by aspiration rather than petition, to draw freely
+upon the one unlimited Source of Strength; and
+young as she was, the older woman grew to rely upon
+her utterly during those days when the light within
+her was darkness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mercifully they found no strangers in the house;
+and Sir Richard's sisters promptly discovered plausible
+excuses for going home.  Helen was evidently in
+good hands; and in no mood for any other company.
+So for a while they two had their shrine of sacred
+memories to themselves; and Lady Forsyth who had
+supposed she knew her Sheila through and through,
+began to feel as if she had never really known her&mdash;till
+now.  Such still, strong natures are slow studies
+always.  In the ordinary way of life, they seldom
+sparkle or allure.  It needs the high demand to call
+forth the hidden elements that make them the salt of
+the earth.  And now, in response to that high demand,
+the true Sheila shone out like a star in darkness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alone with her and the healing influences of home,
+Helen's courage revived apace; and with it her natural
+tendency to merge the personal in the larger view.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All over England, all over Europe, suspense or
+suffering, in some form, had become a paramount
+law of life.  It was the price of patriotism.  Men
+paid it with their blood and their mutilated bodies:
+women with their tears and mutilated lives.  One in
+suffering, they had the more need, all of them, to be
+one in courage.  And Mark himself had willed to
+give everything, without reserve, without regret.
+Bitter repining on her part were simple disloyalty to
+him: and there remained the saving mercy that her
+sorrow was tinged with hope.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There came a morning when she felt able to speak of
+these things to Sheila; even to tell her in detail of
+that talk in her turret-room; and their tacit, mutual
+resolve not to fail him in this last and hardest test of
+loyalty linked them closer than ever&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+So far no word from Bel; and Lady Forsyth felt
+anxious, a little.  Deep and real fellow-feeling had
+wakened her first genuine impulse of affection towards
+the girl.  She had written almost as to a daughter.
+And on this very morning of her talk with Sheila,
+Bel's answer came:&mdash;heart-broken, purged of affectation,
+yet emphasising, in every line, her complete
+divergence of feeling and point of view.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You will wonder, dear, why I haven't written
+sooner, but I'm an arrant coward inside, and I simply
+couldn't face putting the cold truth on paper.  Your
+sweet letter, written while the shock was fresh upon
+you, was a heroic thing.  One sees where Mark got
+his courage.  If he'd only had a little less of it&mdash;he
+might be with us still.  You will disapprove of that
+'If.'  But I'm too utterly crushed to invent correct
+sentiments.  I can only put my own down anyhow,
+even if they're all wrong.  Sweet of you to tell me of
+your private conviction.  I hope to Heaven it may be
+true: but I have no sustaining faith to keep me going.
+Myself, I had a horrid feeling, that last night, that
+it was&mdash;the end.  It's dear of you to say I can come
+when I like.  But just now, having to work keeps
+one from collapse and I am sure you two are happier
+together.  Later on&mdash;perhaps.  Harry is an angel to
+me.  But I'm not pleasant company these days.
+Nothing interests me now and I hate this abominable
+war worse than ever.  If you hear any news, please
+wire.  I got a letter from him&mdash;after yours.  And it
+smashed me up.  That's partly why I didn't write.
+Love to you and Sheila
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+  from your desperately unhappy,<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;BEL."<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Forsyth handed the letter to Sheila.  It was
+blotted at the end, where tears had dropped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Poor child!  She cares more than I gave her credit
+for.&mdash;I wonder," she added, half to herself, "what
+he would think of that letter?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila bit her lip and was silent, and they fell to
+discussing Lady Forsyth's latest scheme&mdash;country
+Cottage Homes for Children Orphaned by the War.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+That morning proved a turning-point in their new,
+shadowed life.  On all sides there was work crying
+out to be done.  They had no right any longer to shut
+themselves up with their sorrow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If we believe he will come back, we must live up to
+our faith," Lady Forsyth said simply: and they did
+so, to the best of their power.  Keith wrote every few
+days, just to keep in touch with them and report
+his movements.  There was nothing else to report&mdash;as yet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Among countless notes of sympathy and hope,
+and of admiration for Mark was none more uplifting
+to the mother's heart than the sincere and simple
+tribute of Colonel Munro.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+"To the Regiment and to me personally," he
+wrote, "the loss is so great that although the worst is
+reported, we cannot give up hope.  Neither will you,
+I feel sure, for many weeks to come.  Forsyth's
+presence among us was an inspiration.  It is not often
+in these dead-level days that one meets with a man
+who seems a natural-born king.  Without exaggeration,
+that was how we felt about him.  Unfortunately,
+those of his company who were with him last are also
+missing; but I feel convinced we shall hear of them all
+yet.  I have named and described the men to Mr. Macnair,
+who writes that he is instituting a search on
+his own account.  Good luck to him: and to you&mdash;the
+very best that heart can wish.  Yours ever,
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+R. MUNRO."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila shared that letter, and every other, even as
+she shared the difficult task of answering them all.
+In this respect, at least, she was grateful to Bel who
+had tacitly relinquished the sad, high privilege that
+was hers by right.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The cottage scheme involved much correspondence
+and occasional journeys to London: and it was then
+that they began to realise more acutely the contrast
+between the "War drama" as visualised by an island
+people, and the stern, yet stimulating actuality, just
+across the Channel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There, even at the Base, the atmosphere was
+electrical with the spirit of the Front, with the
+enthusiasm and passion of a great imaginative race, for
+whom invasion was no "bogey" but a bloody and
+devastating fact.  Here, the great unseen thing was
+frankly a sensation fitfully discerned through the fog
+of censored despatches; analysed, with bewildering
+brilliance, by literary strategists; and distorted by
+visionaries, who extolled "the war against War,"
+and feverishly planned a new heaven on earth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Happily for them, the real issues hung upon the
+vigil and the valour of a negligible minority who were
+only concerned to beat the Germans, and to make
+good, with their lives, the State's miscalculations and
+delays.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the very advantages of the islander are a part
+of his many disabilities.  Not only did realisation
+come slowly to England: but it came too often in the
+wrong guise.  In London, the newspaper craze
+became a form of dram-drinking.  Everything that
+could be said about the great obsession was repeated
+over and over, in every conceivable tone of voice: till
+a bewildered public began to wonder whether politicians
+believed in their high-sounding generalities or
+journalists in their inspired leaders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though social life had practically ceased, the
+pavements of the City were still thronged with men of
+military age, quite convinced, by the tone of certain
+journals, that their services were not urgently needed
+elsewhere; that the War would probably be over by
+Christmas; certainly by Easter.  And, after all, were
+they not doing good work, necessary work, on the
+spot?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Forsyth herself had reason to feel grateful,
+often, for the steadying effect of contact with the
+real thing&mdash;even the fringe of it: and her native
+sensibility to atmosphere made her feel, more keenly
+than most, the clash of contrast between the often
+unwholesome ferment of London and the immovable
+phlegm of the countryside.  Coming home, tired in
+body and spirit, after a long day's work in Town, she
+would be beset by distracting doubts as to how this
+great and casual country of hers would emerge from
+the searching test of war.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was then that Sheila, quick to read her mood,
+would slip behind her, unloose her hair, and with
+skilful finger-tips, magically pluck out weariness and
+doubts alike, till Lady Forsyth would catch at her
+hands and kiss them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sheila, that's not mere massage.  You seem to
+reach one's very soul."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the girl stood smiling down upon her like a
+young goddess radiant with conscious power.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's because I'm loving you hard all the time,"
+she said.  "It's a heavenly gift.  I used to feel&mdash;such
+a dumb thing.  Now I can give it all out through
+my fingers, I feel free.  And&mdash;Dearest," she added
+gravely, "you mustn't get disheartened because
+London, on the surface, seems unspeakable.  The
+unspeakables are always on the surface.  Underneath,
+there are hundreds of real workers and silent
+sufferers, doing and bearing things without trumpets
+or banners.  And aren't our sailors and soldiers
+miracles to praise God for?  Surely such leaven as
+that must end in leavening the whole lump&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You're a miracle to praise God for," Lady Forsyth
+began; but her lip trembled and she was silent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then Sheila, in her protecting mother-fashion,
+drew the older woman's head close to her breast.
+"Nearly three weeks now," she whispered.  "We
+<i>must</i> hear something soon."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Forsyth shivered; but Sheila went resolutely
+on: "London wears you out, Mums, body and soul.
+Let's give it up for a little.  There's plenty of work on
+the spot.  It will hearten up Mark's people to see
+more of you.  They must be anxious too, in their
+own way."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were: and it was the very reflection of her own
+anxiety, the hovering question on every face, that at
+first made this paramount duty a very real ordeal.
+But it was Mark's work; and his mother found it
+by no means devoid of compensation.  It drew them
+all closer together; it threw fresh light on Mark's
+individual fashion of upholding the aristocratic ideal
+among a free people; and it steadily strengthened her
+own conviction that there, where human nature is
+still untainted by industrialism, lies the true hope of
+England's future.  She was sustained, also, by a
+private resolve that when Mark returned he should
+find, within the boundaries of his own kingdom, a
+right spirit towards the War.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Very soon she discovered an ally of equal enthusiasm
+and wider experience&mdash;Dr. Warburton, Headmaster
+of High Rough School.  He had lost no time in getting
+to the Front, as Chaplain of the Forces, leaving High
+Rough in charge of Rex Maitland, to that gentleman's
+undisguised satisfaction.  Already the fatal word
+"indispensable" had become a mark of distinction
+more coveted in some quarters than a decoration.
+Warburton, at home for the moment, on business
+connected with the school, spent most of his spare
+time trying to instil the spirit of the trenches into
+cottages and country shops, where impassioned
+leaders were dismissed as "hot air" and despatches
+full of foreign names were only half understood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As an old friend of the family, he had been among
+the first admitted to see Helen, on her return from
+abroad: and the day after her talk with Sheila, he
+turned up at tea-time in the private hope that he might
+glean news of Mark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His leonine head with its shock of grizzled hair,
+hawk's eyes under shaggy brows, and a Homeric laugh,
+gave a general impression of bigness, belied by his
+mere inches: but the man's inner stature corresponded
+unmistakably with the laugh and the lion's
+head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Within a week, now, he would be back in France.
+"And high time, too," he added, thoughtfully sipping
+his tea.  "I'll miss coming here.  Otherwise&mdash;"
+he shot out his great moustache&mdash;"It's healthier at
+the Front in spite of the shells.  The real spirit of
+England is in the trenches and on the sea."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As he spoke the door opened and a parlour-maid
+brought in the afternoon post.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah&mdash;Keith," Lady Forsyth murmured, seizing
+a thin unstamped envelope and letting the rest fall
+into her lap.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Warburton rose, as if to put down his cup, and
+strolled across to the window.  Presently a small
+sound of relief reached him and he turned quickly
+about.  "Found him, have they?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not yet," Helen answered with a brave smile.
+"But the Sergeant, who was wounded trying to help
+him, has made his way back to the Regiment after
+hair-breadth adventures.  They're sending him home
+at once, Keith says.  He has my address.  He will
+write.  Then I can go and see him."  She spoke in
+short swift sentences, holding emotion in leash.  Sheila
+had risen and was standing near the fire, ostensibly
+warming her hands.  "He and another soldier
+managed to drag Mark to a farm.  He was hit in the
+head.  Unconscious.  They could do no more.  The
+Germans began shelling the place: and there they
+had to leave him with kind French people.  They
+weren't even sure&mdash;if he was alive.  That's all&mdash;so
+far."  She tried to smile.  "It doesn't lift the fog
+much, does it?  But still, just to see this man who
+was with him&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes&mdash;yes," Warburton's regard held more of
+admiration than of pity.  "Let me go with you&mdash;if
+the call comes in time," he added, and rather
+abruptly took his leave.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That night Lady Forsyth wrote to Bel.  "Come to
+me for the week-end, dear," she added, "if you feel
+you can now, and would care to hear in detail what
+little I may have to tell.  With any luck I ought to
+see Sergeant Macgregor before Saturday."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And in a very few days the summons came.  It was
+from Aldershot; and Sheila decided to go with them.
+While they interviewed Macgregor she would love
+to make a round of the wards.  For, in secret, she
+missed her "poor things" and the work at Boulogne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was hard not to hope for impossibilities; but the
+Sergeant's rather disjointed tale served neither to
+justify Helen's obstinate conviction, nor to dispel
+her secret fears.  He was a red-headed man, square
+and sturdy, just able to hobble.  His nerves were
+obviously shaken by all he had been through; and
+his emotion in speaking of that particular day made it
+the harder to restrain her own.  Of the nature of
+Mark's wound he could tell her nothing except that
+there was blood all over his head and that they had
+bandaged it roughly&mdash;he and a British Tommy,
+who contributed his own mud-stained puttee, worn
+for weeks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The mother winced at that.  "Did he know you?"
+she asked quickly hoping he had not seen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah canna rightly tell, ma leddy," was the
+unsatisfactory reply.  "Ah kneeled in the mud and
+ah said: 'Ye ken verra weel who I am, sir?'  An'
+he smiled crooked-like an' pit up his hand to stroke me
+cheek like a bairn.  An' there came a sound in his
+thrapple.  But niver a word.  The Lord shield
+him from the hands o' they Jairman blayguards."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Helen knew, now, that the tide of war had
+rolled over the village where they had left her son:
+and for the moment hope and courage were dead
+within her.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Warburton left for France next day, having promised
+to look up Keith: and Bel arrived with Harry
+to stay over Sunday.  Lady Forsyth had smiled, not
+without understanding, at her request that Harry
+might "come too."  Even in her sorrow Bel was
+still a victim to fear of being bored: and Harry's
+masculine attitude of worship and service was more
+of an asset than she knew.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Forsyth discovered many fresh points in
+common with Harry; but the change in Bel, obvious
+to both, troubled her beyond measure.  Not merely
+was her smiling serenity subdued by grief: but it
+seemed overlaid with a fine film of hardness from which
+things painful or emotional glanced off like arrows
+from a surface of steel.  She would neither look at
+the papers, nor talk of the war.  This fact alone made
+conversation difficult; but for Helen this stumbling-block
+was as nothing to its inner significance.  The
+strain and pain of war, that was steadily softening
+and enlarging Sheila, appeared to be having the
+opposite effect on Bel.  Deliberately she turned her
+eyes away from beholding the world's anguish and
+heroism: deliberately she hardened her heart against
+its effect upon herself; so that she seemed in danger of
+losing even the surface softness that had been no
+small part of her charm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Plainly, her love for Mark, however sincere, had
+no alchemic power to transmute the dross in her to
+gold.  Would his return, such as he was now, dissolve
+that film of hardness?  Or was the girl laying up
+further tragedy for herself and others?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alone with Lady Forsyth, Bel was gentle and
+affectionate, yet completely aloof.  She listened to
+Macgregor's story with set lips and a fine line between
+her brows.  Though the mother's voice shook and
+tears threatened, Bel's eyes were dry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And after that&mdash;you can <i>still</i> manage to hope?"
+was all she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dear, it is not so much hope with me, as&mdash;belief,"
+Lady Forsyth answered gently, and Bel's sigh had a
+faint note of exasperation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are amazing," she said.  "And&mdash;so like
+him."  Then with a swift dramatic gesture, she rose
+and seemed to fling away her mantle of composure.
+"Oh, this brutal, senseless war!" she cried, her eyes
+still hard, her low voice tense with feeling.  "A man
+like that&mdash;splendid, strong, gifted&mdash;smashed up like a
+bit of matchboard.  And what earthly use has it
+been to any one&mdash;his sacrifice or our pain?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The older woman listened to that strange outburst
+with something very like relief.  It proved that Bel
+was not hard all through and it cried aloud the very
+thoughts that had visited her own heart in the small
+hours when all the wheels run low.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Bel&mdash;Bel!" she remonstrated gently, "that is
+<i>the</i> question one dare not ask.  It's hard not to.
+No one knows that better than I do.  But the answer
+is, if Mark, and others of his quality, had taken that
+point of view, where would England be now?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh England!"  She dismissed her country with a
+faint shrug.  "Mark would be here with us, safe and
+whole.  That's all I know&mdash;or care."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her voice still had its low bitterness; but it shook a
+little now and going over to the window she sat
+awhile looking out upon the wood and the terrace
+where she had walked with him in that other life,
+gone beyond recall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Vaguely she heard the door open.  Then a low
+sound from Lady Forsyth made her look round
+sharply.  Helen had risen&mdash;her lips were set and
+pale.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bel glanced at the open letter she held out to her.
+It was a formal intimation, garnished with formal
+regret, that Lieutenant Sir Mark Forsyth, formerly
+reported missing, in November, was now officially
+reported killed.  The scanty information received
+in the past three weeks gave no grounds for supposing
+otherwise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course this was bound to come," Helen said
+mechanically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Bel pushed aside the paper and covered her face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helen stood silent a moment; then she found courage
+to repeat her own conviction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dear, they may report what they please.  Mark
+<i>is</i> alive.  I know it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bel simply shook her head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You don't believe me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But&mdash;you won't go into mourning.  Bel, you mustn't."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No&mdash;no.  I detest mourning."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The muffled voice broke suddenly.  Lady Forsyth
+put an arm round the girl's shoulders and Bel leaned
+against her sobbing like a child.  Then, with a shivering
+sigh, she released herself and hurried out of the
+room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Forsyth picked up that hateful slip of paper
+and dropped it into the fire.  Mark was alive:&mdash;nothing
+could shake her belief in that.  But he was
+wounded&mdash;and in German hands.  Her inmost fear
+had come true.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0301"></a></p>
+
+<h2>
+BOOK III
+<br>
+VIA CRUCIS
+</h2>
+
+<p><br><br></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER I
+</h3>
+
+<p class="intro2">
+  "Love is swift of foot,<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Love's a man of war,<br>
+  And can hit and can shoot<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;From far."<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;GEORGE HERBERT.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+It was on the first of December that Sir Mark Forsyth
+was officially reported killed; and it was upon an
+evening of early November, on a battle-scarred road of
+Northern France, that a certain waggon-load of dead
+and wounded men jolted leisurely towards a certain
+village lately recaptured by the Prussians.  The open
+body of the cart was spacious and full of straw that
+had once been tolerably clean, but was now defiled
+with mud and blood.  It held six men&mdash;two French,
+three British, and one German.  Two of them were
+obviously dead, three were as obviously alive and in
+cruel pain.  The sixth, who wore a kilt and a blood-stained
+puttee wound about his head, lay on his back,
+motionless, wide-eyed, watching a bank of grey
+cloud dissolve into shredded wisps of gold.
+Presently the sun broke through and smiled upon the
+aftermath of battle as upon the sheaves of some
+peaceful harvest garnered with thanks and praise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In this unceremonious fashion was Mark removed
+from the farm where Macgregor had been forced to
+leave him&mdash;dead, to all appearance, or at the point of
+death.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of how he came to be there, in such woeful company,
+he knew nothing.  His brain seemed blurred and
+curiously inert.  He felt no pain, only a horrid
+faintness; utter exhaustion from loss of blood.  He would
+have given the world for a sip of brandy.  Where
+was his flask? he wondered vaguely, but felt too weak
+to stir a finger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Above him, beside the driver, sat a little French
+doctor, talking and gesticulating vehemently.  He
+might be of use, Mark reflected with feeble
+impatience, if one could only attract his attention.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Summoning all his ebbing strength, he tried to
+shout.  The sole result was a horrid choking
+sensation and an abortive noise in his throat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He grew suddenly alarmed.  What did it mean?
+And where were they going?  Had he, possibly, been
+taken prisoner in spite of himself?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was none to enlighten him, even could he have
+spoken; and the torment of uncertainty remained.
+The fact that he suffered no physical pain was a
+minor item to be thankful for.  Not altogether a
+minor item, perhaps, judging from sounds emitted by
+the German at the far end of the cart.  Between
+groans and broken curses he was calling impartially
+on God and his mother.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The last galvanised Mark's brain into momentary
+life.  What of his own mother&mdash;and Bel?  Would
+they believe him killed?  How long was it since his
+clock of time had stopped dead?  Would it ever be
+set going again?  And&mdash;what of the fight?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+More questions&mdash;nothing but questions&mdash;unanswered
+and unanswerable.  They buzzed about him
+like hornets; and to be rid of them he fell back on
+memory.  He recalled a world that rained shells and
+shrapnel&mdash;a violent, friendly and increasingly muddy
+world, in which Allies and enemies were wildly
+intermingled, till it was cleft from end to end by long and
+opposing lines of trenches, with a No Man's Land of
+varying width between.  In the No Man's Land
+things had happened: things that left a scar on the
+memory&mdash;things a man could not talk about and,
+most unhappily, could not forget.  In those early days
+reliefs were few and infrequent; and Mark looked
+back on trench life as an endless age of strain&mdash;nerve
+and body and imaginative brain racked to the limit of
+endurance, and under all a dogged resolve that there
+should be no limit of endurance but the arbitrary limit
+of death.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Too vividly he remembered those last days, when
+grey-green battalions had been hurled against them,
+wave on wave, till his Highlanders, who stood like
+rocks in a storm, had been forced to retire by an urgent
+order from those who alone knew when wisdom
+demanded sacrifice of ground rather than of men.
+Stubbornly, foot by foot, they had fallen back from
+their hard-won position.  Then&mdash;consternation ... and
+confusion.  The battalion on their right seemed
+to have melted away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the enemy allowed them no breathing space
+for dismay.  They were in dire peril: and Mark
+lost not a moment in rallying his men for a final
+desperate stand....  Suddenly, in the midst of it,
+when the struggle was fiercest, the earth had
+seemed to collapse under him.  He recalled a horrid
+sensation of falling backwards, headlong&mdash;into
+nothingness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At that point his memory broke off short.  The
+rest was a meaningless jumble of sights and sensations
+like a troubled dream.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was lying in a turnip-field.  Something had
+happened to his head.  Blood was flowing freely, but
+he felt no pain.  In vain he tried to move.  Weakness
+flowed over him.  Living and conscious, he lay there
+among the dead, listening to the roar of battle that
+rolled steadily farther away; fearful exceedingly lest
+they should bury or burn him; or, finding him alive,
+should take him prisoner while this ignominious
+helplessness hung like lead upon his limbs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At times he could hear voices and men passing.
+But very soon darkness fell again; and out of the
+darkness came a vision of Macgregor's face.  He
+remembered trying to speak, and the feel of the man's
+rough cheek when he patted it in sign of recognition.
+To his intense relief, he had felt them trying
+to move him.  What had come of it?  Where were
+they now?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The questions were at him afresh and the haunting
+thought of his mother.  Once more he summoned all
+his strength in an effort to reach her mentally.  He
+had succeeded in doing so on more than one occasion.
+But now, the attempt was lunacy.  It simply
+exhausted his last remnant of strength, and once more
+he slipped back into the outer dark....
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+By some miracle, his resolute spirit hung on to the
+thread of life that remained; and when next it struggled
+up from the bottomless pit, the cart and the jolting
+and the smell of blood had vanished like all the other
+dreams.  He was lying on a bed.  He could feel
+the blanket against his chin.  The air he breathed
+was faintly impregnated with antiseptics and the
+scent of clean straw.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As his brain cleared, he heard women's voices
+murmuring rhythmically in a foreign tongue.  Too weak
+and weary to stir, he lay awhile steeped in contentment,
+till that rhythmical murmur resolved itself
+into Latin prayers.  French nuns, good souls, must
+be praying by his bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Next moment, the chill trickle of water on his face
+made him start and open his eyes.  One of the nuns
+was bending over him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Our Lady be praised," she said softly.  "The
+spirit has returned.  Monsieur will drink this, and
+strength will also return."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She held a cup to his lips; warm milk dashed with
+brandy&mdash;pure nectar!  It seemed to set life stirring
+in his veins, even as the woman's face set some vague
+memory stirring in his mind.  The breadth of brow
+and cheek-bones, the mouth, with its resolute softness
+and the deep dent above the chin, struck a note of
+dim familiarity; but he felt far too lazy and
+comfortable to search for a clue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The barn-like room in which he found himself was
+no hospital, but a rough makeshift.  There were
+but half a dozen beds like his own.  The remaining
+sufferers lay on straw pallets; and the little French
+doctor, whose profile he recognised, appeared to be in
+charge.  That fact, and the presence of nuns made
+him hopeful of being in the right hands.  If only he
+could ask!  But the curse of dumbness was on him
+still; and a fear that it might be permanent chilled the
+flow of returning life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The other nuns had risen and moved away.  She
+whom they called Sœur Colette stood smiling down
+on him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ça va bien," she said.  "Monsieur comprend?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He made a sign of assent, then with his left hand
+and eyebrow, tried to convey the question he could
+not ask.  Her face lit up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Le bon Dieu soit bénit.  Monsieur desires a little
+conversation.  As much as one can, I will relate."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Serene and smiling, she sat beside him on a low
+stool.  It was purely refreshing to hear a woman's
+voice again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"M. le docteur," she told him, "a saint of God with
+a rough tongue, gathered up many dead and wounded
+from the terrible battle, more than a week ago, and
+brought them here to the Red Cross Hospital, then
+in the hands of my people.  Now&mdash;Mary Mother,
+pity us!&mdash;it is once more taken by the Prussians.
+The hospital is seized for themselves, and M. le docteur
+is graciously permitted to use this ruined farm.
+Those, alas, who recover become prisoners of war.
+Monsieur himself on arriving was as one dead; and,
+next evening, we of the Sisterhood must pray for the
+souls of the departed.  But I, who came to kneel
+near Monsieur, said: 'This, surely, is not
+death.'  While others summoned M. le docteur, myself I
+found, by the mercy of God, one pulse, so small, so
+feeble, there in the neck of Monsieur.  Imaginez!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark smiled his crooked smile and lifted his
+eyebrows.  He found it hard to believe in her fairy
+tale.  But, if it were true, this woman, with the
+beautiful familiar face, had evidently been his good
+angel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was explaining to him now the nature of his
+wound, and how splinters of bone pressing on the
+brain made him powerless to speak or move.  These
+the little doctor had partially lifted.  But the
+complete operation was a delicate one; and he would
+prefer to wait awhile, in hopes that the tide of battle
+should roll eastward again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It might be well for Monsieur, then, to seem as
+one dead," Sœur Colette explained, with a flicker of
+humour in her great dark eyes.  "They would not
+think him worth the trouble to remove; and in Paris all
+is possible."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark had need of the utmost consolation he could
+extract from that thought.  For, as strength returned,
+impatience returned also, and his imprisoned spirit
+girded at the hampering hulk of a body over which
+it had lost command&mdash;for how long?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Questions again!  He grew to hate them heartily.
+Wherever he turned for relief, there one or more would
+spring up to confound him; and at moments of supreme
+exasperation, his brain seemed alive with notes of
+interrogation, seeking answers and finding none.  More
+than once he vowed mentally that if he regained the
+power of speech, he would never again ask a question
+while he lived.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+And he suffered more than exasperation during
+those interminable November days.  The very
+inactivity of his body seemed to induce a restless activity
+of mind.  Fleeting inspirations mocked him: wonderful,
+impossible ideas for bas-reliefs and great symbolic
+figures.  Strange moods swept through him and
+strange unreasoning fears.  There were visions
+also&mdash;and dreams: visions of things he would have
+given years of life to forget; dreams from which
+he awoke in a cold sweat, so shaken that he would
+lie staring at the darkness, positively afraid to close
+his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Very often the dreams were nightmare distortions
+of realities.  These had a horrid knack of recurring at
+intervals; and the one most dreaded by Mark
+concerned a minor incident of No Man's Land that had
+been permanently photographed on his brain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Always it began at the same point: dusk, illumined
+fitfully by searchlights and bursting shells; the
+silhouetted figure of a Sapper subaltern walking coolly
+into the open with his coil of wire; then the scream
+of a bursting shell&mdash;and there, where the boy had
+stood, was a mound of earth and debris at a crater's
+rim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Later on, the moon revealed something that moved
+fitfully near the edge of the mound.  It was the
+leg of that Sapper subaltern&mdash;buried alive.  Under
+heavy and persistent enemy fire, any attempt at
+rescue would have been madness; and Mark, digging
+and carrying all that night, had prayed that a second
+shell might put the boy out of his misery.  But in the
+morning the leg still moved, and continued to move
+at intervals all day; till Mark, fresh to such horrors,
+could endure it no more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That night, when the firing slackened a little,
+another figure, armed with a spade, had crept over the
+parapet and walked coolly out into the open.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And again, just as it reached the mound, a shell
+screamed and the earth yawned&mdash;and when Mark
+recovered consciousness, he was lying on his face a
+good many yards nearer his own trenches, himself
+half buried in the debris of that other mound, which
+was now no more.  He thanked God the boy was
+dead; but the memory of that twenty-four hours had
+haunted him for weeks; and now with pitiless
+persistence it haunted his dreams.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The fact that he could neither speak nor shake off
+mental obsessions by a rousing walk, aggravated their
+tyranny over him; and there were times when it
+crazed him, almost, to lie there, like a felled tree,
+powerless even to ask how he could let his dear ones
+know he was alive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One morning, in such a mood, he tried to convey by
+gesture this question that so troubled him; and, to his
+delight, Sœur Colette understood almost at once.
+No, Monsieur could neither send nor receive letters
+until the good day when "les poilus" or "les Tommies"
+came to their rescue.  And Monsieur had lost
+his talisman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark's left hand went quickly to his throat.  It
+was true.  The precious silver disc and silver chain
+were gone.  He glanced at his wrist.  No leather-coated
+watch&mdash;his mother's gift.  Filled with sudden,
+acute dismay, he went through the dumb show of
+feeling in coat-pockets.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again Sœur Colette understood and shook her head.
+There was nothing in Monsieur's coat&mdash;nothing at all.
+Monsieur le docteur could discover neither his name
+nor his regiment.  In proof of her statement, she
+brought him the coat.  It was rifled very completely.
+His flask, his gold pencil&mdash;Sheila's present&mdash;his
+letter-case and letters&mdash;all gone.  The very buttons and
+badges had been neatly removed; a finishing touch that
+suggested the gentle German.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Mark lay there realising that, unless and until
+he recovered his speech, he was lost, absolutely&mdash;even
+his identity gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was not merely a log, but a nameless log.  He
+chafed at the ignominy of it, as a man in sore straits
+will chafe at a trifle, yet endure the worst with
+fortitude.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly, with vast relief, he remembered his
+brogues.  If only he could tell Sœur Colette to look
+inside them!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the attempt produced such wild and ludicrous
+misunderstandings that the little nun grew embarrassed
+and Mark gave it up in despair.  Perhaps his
+brogues had also been stolen by the Germans.  After
+all, his precious name was no earthly use to him at
+present, and the future was a blank.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+In this monotonous fashion the first weeks of
+November ebbed away.  On the whole they were left
+in peace, except for periodical incursions of a
+rough-mannered German officer with aggressive moustaches,
+a high narrow forehead, and unmistakable Prussian
+eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was his joke, when in a humorous mood, to bid
+the fierce little doctor hurry up with his contributions
+for the nearest prison camp in the Fatherland.  More
+than once he infuriated Mark by alluding to him as
+"that English swine."  But it was the thinly-veiled
+insolence of the man's manner to Sœur Colette that
+made him long most vehemently for command of his
+hands and tongue.  Happily for himself, and for
+those who loved him, he could do no more than glare
+and clench a hidden fist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On one occasion it chanced that Captain Adler
+encountered the flame of impotent wrath in his eyes,
+and the sight appeared to tickle his Teutonic sense of
+humour.  With deliberate relish and a sneering smile
+he looked Mark over from head to foot, then turned
+to the doctor who stood near, inwardly nervous,
+outwardly fiercer than ever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Doubtless the hoch wohlgeboren a without-fear-or-reproach
+knight is," he remarked, with a contemptuous
+jerk of his thumb.  "But never again will he for
+the fair-and-distressed lady of his admiration one
+blow of revenge strike."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark could only set his teeth.  Sœur Colette,
+who knew a little German, bent very low over the
+young Frenchman she was feeding; and the Prussian,
+chuckling audibly, swung out of the barn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That afternoon there came a lull in the unceasing
+rain and wind.  The sky cleared and the sun shone
+out with a divine effulgence upon all the ruin and
+tragedy wrought by man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Since Mark's arrival there had been only one such
+golden interval.  It had lasted several days, and
+he had succeeded in conveying his great wish to be
+out in the open.  So to-day the little doctor and his
+orderly carried him, bed and all, into the homely
+garden.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There, storm-draggled chrysanthemums made
+patches of colour.  Stray leaves of Virginia creeper
+flamed on the walls; and the farmhouse itself gaped
+roofless to the indifferent heavens.  A dovecot, battered
+and empty of doves, leaned drunkenly against the
+barn that was their hospital.  The poplars behind it,
+etched delicately upon the blue, had been stripped,
+in this terrible autumn, of branches as well as leaves;
+and the fields beyond were pock-marked by shell
+fire.  Yet peasant women still patiently tended the
+wounded earth and its products.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some way off, on rising ground, stood the feudal
+chateau&mdash;what remained of it: headless turrets,
+gables shattered and distorted; windows, like empty
+eye-sockets, mere gaping holes.  And the garden,
+beneath, sloping downward to the river, was a chaos
+of trampled shrubberies and twisted iron.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark, in his utter loneliness, cut off from letters and
+activity and the companionable gift of speech, could,
+at least, thank God for the "silver streak" and the
+grey battleships that preserved his own most sacred
+treasures from a like fate.  But thought of those
+treasures so tormented him and roused such a buzzing
+swarm of questions, that he refrained&mdash;as far as
+possible&mdash;from futile excursions into the future or the
+past; and he began to grow impatient for the advent
+of Sœur Colette with his chocolate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He accepted, without after-thought, the fact that
+it was always she who attended him and entertained
+him; nor was he disposed to quarrel with the arrangement.
+He had discovered by this time why she created
+about him an atmosphere of home and of assurance
+that all was well.  Dreaming one night of Sheila,
+he had waked in the morning to find Sœur Colette
+standing by his bed; and the haunting sense of
+familiarity was a puzzle no longer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a moment Mark had fancied he must still be
+dreaming.  Then the nun spoke and the illusion
+vanished.  But the charm remained; a charm that
+carried him back to early days before Bel's disturbing
+witchery had changed the complexion of life.  In his
+isolation and bitter uncertainty, he surrendered
+himself, instinctively, to this blessed illusion of home.
+It was his one real solace throughout those grey,
+interminable weeks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What their one-sided talks and increasing friendliness
+might mean to Sœur Colette he neither knew, nor
+sought to know.  As a nun, he deemed her sacred, a
+being set apart.  He was apt to forget&mdash;as the insolent
+Adler never forgot&mdash;that a nun is nevertheless a
+woman.  But to-day, as the minutes lagged past and
+she did not appear, there stirred in him an emotion
+other than mere impatience&mdash;an emotion belonging
+to that virile world where a man could walk and talk
+and fight and hold a woman in his arms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He checked himself sharply.  That would never
+do.  It was almost as if, through this unknown
+Frenchwoman, the spirit of Sheila were drawing him
+back to his old allegiance that, in those July days
+before the deluge, had been on the verge&mdash;he knew it
+now&mdash;of blossoming into a strong and deep love.
+And she&mdash;?  Had she, possibly, begun to care?  But
+that also, would never do.  He had chosen; or, to be
+more accurate, Bel had chosen and he had succumbed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He surveyed his great prostrate figure almost with
+disgust.  Would Bel, as revealed in her recent letters,
+have any use for a lover who could neither pay her
+compliments nor take her in his arms?  Strange how,
+in these few weeks, she seemed to have slipped away
+from him.  Even her face eluded his memory.  It
+was the face and form of his virile little mother that
+was most constantly with him in these days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, deliberately, he called up a vision of an
+earlier Bel&mdash;unknown, irresistible, ardently desired&mdash;sitting
+on a rock beside the burn awaiting his avowal,
+while he fondly believed her dreaming her own dreams.
+This time memory played him no tricks; and the very
+vividness of the scene intensified his dawning perception
+of a change, gradual, indefinable, that had crept
+into their relation since war wrenched them apart.
+Her first letters, he remembered, had bothered him;
+and he had found the same lack, the same touch of
+artificiality in those that had followed him to France.
+His very hunger for them had only increased the
+vague disappointment they so often produced.  He
+recalled a remark of hers: "Separations are rather
+uncanny things."  Curiously true&mdash;in her own case.
+While she was with him, it seemed, she approximated
+instinctively to the woman he would have her be.
+Without him, she became simply the product of her
+unsatisfactory antecedents.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, he had lost her letters with the rest of his
+kit; and on the whole he was not sorry....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Just as impatience revived afresh, Sœur Colette
+and the chocolate appeared at last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sight of her recalled the morning's incident and
+she saw the recollection in his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Monsieur must not so concern himself on my
+account," she said, after apologies for the delay.
+"If Monsieur could know what one has seen, what one
+has passed through unharmed, since they drove us
+from our convent!  I have no fear.  I am shielded
+by Our Lady!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a few seconds Mark looked hard at her.  Then,
+to her amazement, he blurted out two words, the first
+he had uttered for a month.  "Tell me," he said.  His
+voice sounded strange; but he had produced the right
+words, and he saw his own exultation repeated in her
+eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah, Monsieur!" she cried.  "It will come at
+last&mdash;the miracle.  We have prayed without ceasing.
+And now&mdash;one must obey Monsieur's first command!
+But it is a story too terrible for altogether telling,
+Monsieur understands?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Monsieur understood very well; but he had a
+great wish to know more of this sainted woman,
+who smiled with Sheila's smile and spoke with her
+voice.  So in the quiet of that golden afternoon she
+told him&mdash;sitting on the doctor's camp-stool&mdash;of the
+town in Northern France that was her home, and of the
+bombardment that was the beginning of sorrows;
+when people lived in their cellars under the shadow
+of a greater fear than the fear of death.  For after
+the shells came the Uhlans, demanding money and
+wine and women; above all wine and more wine,
+drowning their manhood so that no form of brutality
+came amiss.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With the same unimpassioned detachment, she
+told him of her own Sisterhood that, in pity, had
+stayed to help the wounded, and of "la petite
+Pauline."  A novice, beautiful and spirited, she had
+resented the coarse gallantry of certain German
+soldiers.  Her contempt had roused the devil in them.
+Embraces not willingly given, must be taken by force.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And she&mdash;poor innocent&mdash;she died in my arms,
+crazed with terror and torment.  And they laughed
+... those devils!"  She was silent a moment, looking
+out over the disfigured landscape.  "Monsieur,
+there are things that even the good God Himself can
+surely never forgive."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rising abruptly, she left him&mdash;haunted, enraged,
+half wishing he had not asked for her tale.  Yet these
+were the very abominations that, if ever he reached
+home again, must be remembered, verified, and
+mercilessly avenged.  She was right, that small
+fearless woman: there were things that God Himself
+could not forgive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From that day there came a slight change in Mark's
+happy relation with Sœur Colette.  Her likeness to
+Sheila worried him now, almost as much as it had
+charmed him before.  The sense of having unconsciously
+slipped away from Bel set him idealising her
+afresh; regilding her halo, till she became again
+almost the Bel of that July afternoon in the glen,
+before the shock of her repudiation had temporarily
+shaken his faith and love.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sœur Colette, dimly aware of some jar in their
+communion, suffered her own private shock of
+awakening.  While all went smoothly, she had suspected
+nothing.  Now she knew&mdash;and shame overwhelmed
+her.  While her lips had prayed daily for the victorious
+return of French or British soldiers, her heart,
+dedicated to the Mother of God, had been secretly
+dreading the end of this, the one idyll of her saintly life.
+And because she shrank from confession of that most
+human lapse, she devised for herself certain penances
+that failed signally to still the strange new disturbance
+within.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last, on a day, the dull thunder she had prayed
+for reverberated along the horizon.  By slow degrees
+it rolled nearer, steadily nearer, till Mark could
+distinguish the familiar note of bursting shells.  Then
+it was that he began to ask himself&mdash;would the
+Germans think him worth taking along with them as a
+prisoner of war?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He hoped they might not even be given time to
+save their own skins.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0302"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER II
+</h3>
+
+<p class="intro2">
+  "So hard it seems that one must bleed<br>
+  Because another needs will bite!<br>
+  All round we find cold nature slight<br>
+  The feelings of the totter-knee'd."<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;MEREDITH.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Forsyth sat in her bedroom window-seat,
+looking out over the terrace to the restless pine woods
+tossed and tumbled by the wind.  Masses of grey
+cloud sagged low above the trees.  Here and there
+patches of fragile blue showed fitfully.  Then the sun
+took courage and flashed a pale smile from between
+two scurrying clouds.  Gradually the sky cleared.
+The wet flags of the terrace gleamed like polished
+steel.  Drenched and dismal trees stood suddenly
+transfigured.  Every leaf and twig flaunted a diamond.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How Mark would love it!" was the mother's
+instinctive thought: and closing her eyes a moment
+she lifted her face to the sun's caress.  The clear light
+revealed lines that had not been there in August.
+She had passed through deep waters, this bereaved
+woman, who refused to own herself bereaved: and in
+some ways the past week had seemed the longest, the
+hardest of all.  While Bel mourned her lover as
+dead, she, who refused to mourn her son, had been
+subjected to requests for photographs and details
+for obituary notices.  She had been threatened with
+a fresh epidemic of condolences; and, finally, in
+self-defence, had sent a brief notice to the <i>Times</i>, and
+<i>Morning Post</i>, announcing that Sir Mark Forsyth's
+family had not yet given up hope.  Let them
+denounce her for a fool if they chose!  The flame
+within still burned on; tremulous, unquenchable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When she looked down again, two figures had
+appeared on the terrace: Sheila and Mr. Seldon,
+moving very slowly, deep in talk.  The man was tall
+and thin, with a small, aristocratic head.  He could
+not yet walk without crutches; but, by a miracle of
+surgery, the leg had been saved.  He seemed a homeless
+creature: parents dead; married sister in India;
+and Sheila had begged that he might spend part of his
+convalescence at Wynchcombe Friars.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was quite frankly interested in his new
+development.  Whether that interest went deeper, Lady
+Forsyth found it hard to tell; the more so, that she
+felt doubtful how far Sheila had ever let herself go in
+respect of Mark.  That she loved him was certain,
+and natural enough; but the extent and nature of that
+love was her own most hidden secret, kept under
+lock and key.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Forsyth herself had hoped honestly, for
+Sheila's sake, that the girl's heart was not given
+irrevocably to Mark.  Yet here she was, with her
+native inconsistency, resenting the least sign that
+it might have strayed elsewhere.  She had the grace
+to remind herself that Sheila&mdash;by temperament and
+by her own shy confession&mdash;was made for marriage,
+for motherhood.  But&mdash;it must not be Seldon.  On
+that point Helen was unwavering: though, in spite of
+drawbacks, she liked the man.  She found him clever,
+interesting, and annoyingly self-conscious.  Sheila, it
+seemed, had complete faith in his remarkable
+transmutation.  Helen privately doubted whether it
+would outlast the stimulus of the war.  She even
+suspected him of playing up to the girl's new view of
+him in the hope that so he might win her after all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, Sheila was strong enough and wise enough to
+work out her own salvation; but there were moments
+when Helen was half tempted to wish that Mr. Seldon
+had stuck to his desert station and his whisky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By now the fugitive gleam had brought two more
+figures into the garden: Ralph Melrose, with his left
+arm in a sling, and Mona's young step-brother,
+Eldred Laurence: an infant of twenty who had been
+through everything from Mons to Ypres.  He limped
+badly and wore a bandage over one eye.  Both boys,
+Helen perceived, had brought back from their great
+ordeal an engaging modesty and cheerfulness; a truer
+perspective of things in general.  And they were not
+rare phenomena.  They were average specimens of
+their kind; standing proofs of the hard paradox that
+"the senseless, devilish, bestial thing" called War
+had, even in a few months, done more to lift and
+enlarge the characters of those who waged it, in a
+right spirit, than a decade of material prosperity
+and peace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These three convalescents, and one other, represented
+Helen's household of the moment.  That other
+was the Rev. George Wilton, Wynchmere's new curate.
+In an impulse of kindliness&mdash;since regretted&mdash;Helen
+had succumbed to the importunity of Mrs. Clutterbuck
+on his behalf.  With a battalion temporarily billeted
+on the little town, there were simply no "rooms" to
+be had; none, at least, that suited the Rev. Wilton's
+fastidious taste.  The one Hotel was over-crowded
+with officers.  Three subalterns had invaded the
+Vicarage and Mrs. Clutterbuck was in a quiver of
+anxiety over the possible effect upon her two plain
+daughters of khaki and frivolous conversation for
+breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  If "dear Lady Forsyth"
+would take pity on Mr. Wilton, it would be an "act of
+Christian kindness," and who knew but she might
+find herself entertaining an angel unawares!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had entertained the angel for a week, now, and
+was only aware of having stumbled on a specimen of
+sanctified snobbery, who annoyed her to exasperation.
+Though she numbered among her friends
+more than one Scottish Minister, the average English
+curate had a knack of setting all her bristles on end:
+and Mr. Wilton was the average curate&mdash;with aggravations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He is what Americans would call a 'bromide,'"
+she had written to Keith shortly after his arrival.
+"He discovers the obvious with enthusiasm.  He
+asks me for the toast or the salt as apologetically
+as if he were asking for a five pound note; and he
+says '<i>Eg</i>-zactly' to every word I utter&mdash;almost before
+it's out!  When I'm in a really wicked mood, I
+contradict myself wildly just to test his mental and
+moral agility!  I'm convinced I shall catch him out one
+day, backing up compulsion, or the right of churchmen
+to defend their country.  And he's dead against both.
+By which you may see that I'm badly needing the
+two of you to keep me in order...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By this time it was four o'clock.  The strollers
+had gone in for tea: and as Helen rose to join them,
+the "angel unawares" came flapping down the path
+through the rose-garden, a neatly folded mackintosh
+and an unrolled umbrella hanging over his left arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There had been a partial movement of troops.  He
+had been out to "try his luck": and in that one
+respect, at least, she was his fervent well-wisher.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She found them all in the drawing-room and Sheila
+making tea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Couldn't wait for you, Mums," she apologised.
+"The kettle was having a fit!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two subalterns rose at her entrance.  But it
+was Wilton who secured her favourite chair and
+pushed it a couple of inches nearer the table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I hope you didn't have your long wet walk in
+vain?" she said; and he turned an eloquent eye upon
+her as he sank back among his cushions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I think not.  But even if I had, I cannot pretend
+I should have suffered serious disappointment."  His
+gaze wandered appreciatively round the firelit room.
+"It has been such a pleasure&mdash;such a privilege...
+Muffins?  Sandwiches?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He proffered them with eager empressement;
+and proceeded to recount, in minutest detail, the
+happy chance by which he believed he had at last
+secured the good cooking, the south aspect and the
+unlimited supply of hot water indispensable to his
+well-being.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Forsyth, it must be admitted, listened with
+only one ear.  The other was attentively following a
+discussion between Ralph and Laurence as to the
+best means of making a sheltered, complacent people
+"sit up and begin to take notice of the scrap across the
+water."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Laurence was for compulsion; Ralph for a vigorous
+revival of his Majesty's Opposition; and Helen was a
+keen advocate of both.  Skilfully and politely, she
+slipped away from the vexed question of curtains and
+pictures to the more congenial occupation of
+reconstructing the Government, and "rounding up"
+the slackers who were obviously "waiting to be
+fetched."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nothing short of <i>that</i>," she concluded in her
+emphatic fashion, "will disturb their casual
+conviction that England can beat Germany with one hand
+tied behind her back."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a subject on which she was apt to wax hot,
+even a trifle caustic; but never, since Wilton's arrival,
+had she spoken with such vehemence as she felt suddenly
+moved to do by sheer irritation at his womanish
+fiddle-faddling.  For a while he listened in mute
+amazement, with the bird-like tilt of his head and
+eyes riveted on her face.  Then, as she paused to
+empty her cup, he leaned a little towards her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But <i>dear</i> Lady Forsyth," he asked in his slowest,
+silkiest tones, "how, precisely, would you define
+that somewhat loose term of disparagement&mdash;a
+slacker?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A self-regarding, spiritual sluggard," she answered
+him with a straight look.  "Is that precise enough?
+The 'slacker'&mdash;so far as I understand the breed&mdash;would
+rather <i>not</i> see England share the fate of Belgium;
+but would very <i>much</i> rather not risk his life or limbs,
+to avert the calamity.  At best, he is afflicted with a
+disease called 'humanitarianism,' that would have
+men save their skins at the cost of everything that
+makes their skins worth saving.  At worst, he simply
+shirks his obvious duty for the sake of his own peace
+and comfort."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hear, hear!" from the three convalescents and
+from Wilton a faint gasp of dismay.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Eg</i>-zactly," he murmured automatically, fingering
+his remnant of cake.  "But that sounds ... <i>just</i> a
+little sweeping; not to say severe."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With a sigh of impatience, Lady Forsyth rose and
+went over to the fire.  Her cheeks were flushed; but
+her hands and feet were cold.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Certain sorts of people <i>require</i> a dash of severity,"
+she remarked to the room at large.  "Browning was
+right.  There are some souls 'terror must burn the
+truth into'...  A good many in these islands, high
+and low."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wilton nervously cleared his throat.  "Ah&mdash;Browning,"
+he struck in, evading the issue.  "A
+stimulating writer.  Rather too rough and obscure for
+my taste."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's not the point."  She dismissed his taste
+impatiently.  Interruption annoyed her when she
+was well under way.  "The point is terror burning
+the truth into people, who have a positive genius
+for shutting their eyes to it&mdash;if it's likely to make
+them uncomfortable.  One wonders, will even these
+unmasked Germans convince our intellectuals that
+evil in all its forms is a deadly reality, to be fought
+and conquered; not a sort of moral indigestion to be
+cured with sugar-coated tabloids!  Between science
+and civilisation, we've exploded hell and chloroformed
+the devil.  And if we're properly advanced, we can't
+even commit sin.  We are merely the victims of
+environment or inherited tendencies.  Nothing like
+the polysyllable steam-roller for flattening out
+awkward facts!  Take the case of the slacker.  What does
+his argument amount to in Saxon English?  'I
+don't see the force of risking my life for my country.'  But
+deck it out in polysyllables, and you can conjure
+it into quite a lofty sentiment.  You try, Mr. Wilton,
+in your next sermon&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hullo, here comes Sheila's scarlet spider."  Ralph's
+voice from the window-seat broke the thread of her
+monologue and saved the slightly staggered curate
+from further discomfiture.  "A wire for one of us!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Forsyth started.  "Keith!" was her instant
+thought.  "Ralph, dear, run and get it," she said.
+"Hester's out."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An odd silence fell till he reappeared.  "For you,"
+he said, "and the imp's waiting."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With a sudden leap of conviction, she tore it open
+and read: "Sir Mark Forsyth is alive and wounded
+but safe.  I have letter from France.  Posting
+to-night."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was signed by Mark's bootmaker at Winchester.
+But, at the moment, her brain took in nothing
+beyond the incredible fact.  Mark was there&mdash;across
+the Channel.  She could go to him....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Any answer?" Ralph asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She shook her head.  Then, suddenly, she looked up,
+with a strange, uncertain smile.  "Mark is alive&mdash;safe!"
+she said, an uncontrollable note of triumph
+in her low voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She saw Sheila rise; heard disjointed sounds from
+the four men: then a rush of tears blinded her, and
+she hurried out of the room.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+It was some time before Sheila joined her.  She,
+who had shared all, knew that the mother's first
+ecstasy of reprieve was a matter between her own soul
+and God.  And Sheila herself found it hard to speak
+calmly of this great news.  The blaze of it made one
+realise what a shadowy thing hope had been at best.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She found Lady Forsyth sitting over her fire drowned
+fathoms deep in the wonder of it all.  Undried tears
+gleamed on her cheeks and the precious telegram
+lay unheeded on the floor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila knelt down by her and they clung together
+in silence.  Then, casually, Sheila picked up the
+telegram.  "I want&mdash;to see it written," she murmured
+with a sudden stab of recollection.  "But&mdash;why Jevons?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's the mystery.  Why should he get a letter
+about my boy?  And what's wrong with Mark that he
+didn't write himself?  Oh my dear, what marvels of
+perversity we are!  Here have I kept myself going for
+weeks by the firm belief that we must get him back:
+and now it's come, I'm a shivering sceptic.  I have
+almost to pinch myself to make sure it's not a dream."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Sheila standing by her was reading the telegram
+over and over.  "It's no dream," she said.  "It's&mdash;a
+miracle.  I suppose we can't wire to Mr. Macnair
+or Colonel Munro till you get that letter.  But&mdash;there's Bel."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes&mdash;there's Bel."  A pause.  "I hope the shock
+of joy will unfreeze her.  She'd better come here, if
+she can.  Get me a form, darling, and see if the men
+are happy.  I'd like to sit here peacefully till
+dinner&mdash;and think about my boy."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila dropped a kiss on her hair and vanished:
+not for long.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Quite happy, are they?  <i>All</i> of them?" Lady
+Forsyth asked when the wire had been despatched.
+"I'm pricked with faint compunction over the curate
+man.  He roused the devil in me with his hot bath
+and his art curtains.  But I didn't mean to hit quite
+so hard...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila's eyes twinkled.  "I'm afraid we all loved
+it!  And you needn't be pricked with compunction,
+Dearest.  I found him on the drawing-room sofa,
+quite audibly asleep, with his mouth open!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There are <i>some</i> souls...!" Helen confided to
+the blazing logs.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+That evening was the liveliest that the convalescents
+had experienced at Wynchcombe Friars.  After
+dinner Lady Forsyth played to them for the first time.
+Music was the one adequate outlet for her pent-up
+emotion.  She chose only triumphal themes and she
+played them triumphantly.  Let her audience
+understand if they chose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Seldon, ensconced in an armchair by the fire, listened
+with rapt attention, his neat profile cut like a cameo
+on the oak panelling beyond.  Sheila sat near him on
+the wide fender-stool, absorbed in her own thoughts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly when the music was loudest he leaned
+towards her over the arm of his chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Miss Melrose," he said in a low voice.  "Do tell
+me, who is&mdash;Bel?  Is she a connection?  What's her
+other name?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila started and looked round.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Alison," she said, "Bel Alison.  She's
+engaged&mdash;to Sir Mark.  Why?  D'you know her?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I seem to remember the name," he answered
+evasively.  "A tall, striking-looking girl?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."  His manner pricked Sheila's curiosity;
+but she did not repeat her question.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Coming to-morrow, is she?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," Sheila said again; and this time a wild
+possibility darted through her brain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Seldon, frowning and biting his lip, still scrutinised
+the fire.  "Sounds like a girl&mdash;I met one summer,"
+he remarked casually.  "Odd if it is the same.&mdash;And
+she's to be mistress of all this?  She's in luck.
+Sir Mark, I take it, is a very fine fellow?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A very fine fellow," the girl answered; and for a
+few minutes Seldon seemed to ponder her statement.
+Then, with an odd jerk of his head, he abruptly
+changed the subject.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A treat to hear playing like that.  What with
+gramaphones and things, people won't be bothered
+nowadays.  And she's got such a ripping touch."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She's inspired to-night," Sheila said, glancing
+towards the slender upright figure in the dull blue
+teagown, shot through with gold, woven for her by
+Mark's people and designed by Mark himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Seldon, it was evident, would say no more about
+Bel.  That in itself lent colour to the wild possibility
+that Sheila hoped, for Mark's sake, was too wild to be
+true.  The bare chance of it so troubled her that
+long after she had soothed Lady Forsyth into a
+deep sleep, she lay wide-eyed, in her own little
+room, wondering and dreading and piecing things
+together; wishing fervently that Seldon had held his
+tongue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, to-morrow she would see them together; and
+Bel, ignorant of Mr. Seldon's anonymous confidences,
+would almost certainly give herself away.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0303"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER III
+</h3>
+
+<p class="intro2">
+  "She gave no vine of Love to rear,<br>
+  Love's wine drank not; yet bent her ear<br>
+  To themes of Love no less."<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;MEREDITH.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Next morning, in spite of her vigil, Sheila appeared
+earlier than usual in Lady Forsyth's room, to share
+tea and letters&mdash;especially letters.  And there failed
+not the envelope with the Winchester postmark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The bootmaker&mdash;respectfully amazed and delighted&mdash;begged
+to enclose a letter in French whose contents
+he had learnt from a Belgian refugee.  It was written
+in Sœur Colette's fine clear hand; and beneath her
+modest signature a circle of sealing-wax bore the
+Forsyth crest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At sight of it the mother's tears started.  "Oh,
+I'm an idiot.  Read it to me, darling," she said
+handing the letter to Sheila.  And Sheila read in a low
+steady voice, the plain tale, simple yet astonishing, of
+Mark's threefold reprieve from death: of the mystery
+that surrounded him till Sœur Colette&mdash;who
+attributed every detail to the goodness of God and the
+Holy Virgin&mdash;discovered his name and regiment
+written inside his brogues; of the victorious French
+Army that returned at last, scattering and annihilating
+"les Boches" so that there was scant time for
+collecting sick prisoners or indeed for anything but a
+hurried retreat upon stronger positions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But already," continued the writer, "M. le
+docteur had of his wisdom made them to suppose that
+Monsieur was without hope of recovery.  May the
+good God forgive him that deception so well-intended.
+Possessing no other address, I venture to report these
+matters to M. le cordonnier, trusting that they may
+yet arrive to the relations of Monsieur Sir Forsyth
+who is of a courage and patience unsurpassed.  Having
+power to move his left hand he has pressed with his
+own ring the wax one has spilt upon this page for a
+message to Madame his mother.  If one should come
+soon and take him to Paris, M. le docteur has great
+hope that in time he will walk and speak as before."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus Sœur Colette, in her saintly simplicity; and
+neither of the women, who read and read again the
+letter she had written, with tears and prayers, caught
+a glimpse of the idyll that had saddened and glorified
+her life.  They had far too much, on their own account,
+to think of, to give thanks for, and to do.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, if I could only pack up and start this instant!"
+was the cry of Helen's impatient spirit.  "And he,
+lying paralysed, all these weeks&mdash;my poor darling!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The first obvious move was a telegram to Keith,
+care of Colonel Munro, whom he kept informed of his
+movements: more telegrams to relations and friends;
+and&mdash;a letter to Mark.  Life was suddenly real
+again; purposeful, genuinely worth living.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Soon after breakfast came a wire from Bel.  "Thanks
+for splendid news.  Arriving Westover 4.15."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll take the car out and meet her," Sheila
+announced with decision.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Something in her tone made Lady Forsyth look
+up from the letter she was writing.  "Very sweet of
+you, my lamb," she said: but Sheila knew that
+sweetness had nothing whatever to do with it.  "Crown
+your virtue by giving his Reverence a lift into
+Wynchmere as you go through.  We shall scarcely escape
+tears at parting!  The fleshpots and the title and the
+joy of casually airing it can be trusted to eclipse all
+my egregious remarks."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seemed she was not far wrong.  After lunch
+Wilton hovered about like a tame rook, murmuring
+plaintive platitudes, lamenting his inability to put
+into adequate words ... and so on and so forth.
+But at the last, spurred by inexorable sounds without,
+he found, in one breath, the adequate word and the
+courage to speak it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Dear</i> Lady Forsyth," he murmured bowing over
+her hand.  "It has been such a privilege.  Quite a
+liberal education.  So hard to tear oneself away!
+At lunch I was wishing&mdash;forgive the audacity&mdash;that I
+had the luck to be your son.  Then I need never go
+away."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My son?"  She started and changed colour: at
+that moment it was the last audacity she felt
+disposed to forgive.  "If you were my son, Mr. Wilton,
+you'd have to go a good deal farther than Wynchmere.
+I should send you straight out to France&mdash;where you
+ought to be now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The startled curate drew back as if from a blow.
+"But my cloth&mdash;my sacred calling&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She gave him a direct look.  "It may surprise
+you," she said.  "But I have looked carefully through
+the ordering of priests and the Thirty-nine Articles
+and I can find there no admonition whatever that
+churchmen shall abstain from bearing arms in defence
+of their country.  And look at the French priests.
+Hundreds of them in the ranks; lifting the Church,
+by their manliness and courage, to a position it has
+not occupied since the Revolution.  I know several
+clergymen, Scottish and English, with the colours.
+And I am quite <i>sure</i> their sacred calling has suffered
+no stain because they have bayoneted a few Germans
+and quitted themselves like men.  They will preach
+sermons worth hearing, those brave fellows ... if
+they win through.  It's men, real men, that we need
+if the Church is to regain her lost hold on us all."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Eg</i>-zactly," he agreed inadvertently, to her huge
+delight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well then&mdash;why not go out and qualify&mdash;&mdash;?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Impossible, dear lady, impossible."  He reddened
+distressfully lifting one long hand as if to ward off the
+devil in person.  "Others&mdash;I would not presume to
+judge.  Every man is ultimately responsible to the
+Inner Light.  And <i>my</i> conscience would never
+permit&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That settles it," she interposed briskly, without a
+touch of flippancy.  "We can't start a full-dress debate
+on the doorstep; Miss Melrose has a train to meet.
+I hope the hot water and the cooking and the curtains
+will leave nothing to be desired.  I mean it," she
+added with her kindest smile, and handed him over to
+Sheila, who had found some difficulty in dispensing
+with the services of Ralph.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wilton was abnormally silent all the way to
+Wynchmere; and Sheila was absorbed in her driving and
+her own thoughts.  At intervals the pensive curate
+glanced at her under his eyelids; appraised her
+charming profile&mdash;a shade too resolute for his taste&mdash;and
+her capable handling of the machine.  Yet his
+thoughts were practical rather than sentimental.
+Thanks to a natural genius for gleaning personal items,
+he already knew that Sheila Melrose possessed
+advantages which distinctly enhanced her charming
+profile.  In the common phrase of parish gossips there
+was "plenty of money going" at Westover Court.
+Mrs. Melrose, he learnt, was a Burlton, daughter of a
+great steel magnate in the North; married, by some
+queer freak of fate, to George Melrose, the
+distinguished antiquarian.  Melrose, himself,&mdash;shy and
+clever, drowned fathoms deep in his researches&mdash;appeared
+to spend most of his time in Egypt, where
+Sheila had stayed with him on her way from India.
+Not even the War, nor a very real affection for his
+youngest daughter, had power to lure him back to the
+uncongenial atmosphere of the old home he had once
+so loved that, in order to save it, he had married
+money.  Then, too late, a lucky speculation had
+considerably increased his own private means; and,
+as Westover Court had become a stronghold of the
+entire Burlton family, he had found it expedient to
+spend a good deal of his time elsewhere.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wynchmere had duly given the new curate its
+garbled history of the Melrose <i>ménage</i>; but for Wilton
+the chief point of interest lay in the assurance that
+all three daughters would be well dowered; and this
+one was an open favourite at Wynchcombe Friars.
+Decidedly, if it came to business, the youngest Miss
+Melrose would do very well.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The glow of this secret decision made his limp
+handshake at parting a degree less limp than usual:
+but Sheila wore thick driving gloves and was visibly
+in a hurry to be gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At Westover station she annexed Bel&mdash;radiant,
+friendly, and eager for further news.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sheila&mdash;is it stark true?" she asked as they spun
+along between bare hedges.  "Have you got the
+mysterious letter?  Who wrote it?  Please tell
+everything."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Sheila told&mdash;keeping her eyes on the wheel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the word "paralysis" Bel started.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, how horrible!  So disfiguring.&mdash;I suppose
+Lady Forsyth will go out to him.  And she believed
+it all the time.  Isn't she a wonder?  <i>I</i> can't, even
+now.  Not till I see him and feel him&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There flashed a vivid memory of her first drive
+along this familiar road, when Mark had sat beside
+her in the August sunlight: and she fell silent, thinking
+her own thoughts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila had just braced herself to a casual mention of
+Seldon, when Bel spoke again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Any wounded at Wynchcombe Friars just now?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, three of them.  Ralph&mdash;almost well.  Mona's
+brother, Mr. Laurence.  Such a delightful boy; and
+Mr. Seldon, an Indian civilian.  Came over as a
+despatch-rider&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Seldon?  From India?"  It was enough.  Sheila
+knew now that the wild possibility was true.  "A
+thin dark man, is he?  Clever and rather good-looking?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  Have you been in India?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila looked round now, curious to see if Bel were
+the least put out by the reappearance of a lover she
+had cruelly hurt and deceived.  On the contrary she
+seemed interested and rather amused.  "No.  I met
+him on leave in Cornwall, some years ago.  Odd he
+should turn up again here!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not so very," Sheila said with her small smile.
+"You see, he's a friend of mine.  I met him in India
+and we've corresponded ever since.  Then he came
+over to France: and I found him one day among
+the wounded at Boulogne."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, <i>you</i> know him too!"  Bel's amusement increased
+visibly.  "D'you like him?  I thought him
+rather a poor specimen."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The war has brought out all the best in him,"
+Sheila remarked.  Every moment she grew angrier
+with Bel; angrier, and more resolute to get at the
+truth&mdash;in good time.  For months she had been
+sitting down severely on her own deep-seated jealousy
+and pain; and this final proof of Bel's utter
+unworthiness, coming at such a moment, seemed to shake the
+foundations of things.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some women, it appeared, were privileged to go
+about the world sowing pain and reaping adulation:
+and Sheila, whose creed was acceptance, was still
+young enough to be badly tripped up, on occasion, by
+the bewildering injustices of life.  It was her private
+opinion that Bel deserved to be hurt, and probably
+never would be.  Not that she consciously sat in
+judgment.  There was nothing of the prig in her
+composition.  But, because her heart was the biggest
+thing about her, she held peculiarly sacred the hearts
+of men, that, for Bel and her kind, are so many
+counters on the gaming-tables of life.  Small,
+contained creature though she was, sins of passion or
+emotion were the sins she could most readily understand
+and condone.  It was Bel's smiling, unassailable
+selfishness that alienated and enraged her.  And
+Mark, with his fiery sensitive spirit, at the mercy of
+such an one for life!  The thought of it was almost
+more than she could bear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For Bel, herself, Sheila was simply a rather sweet
+person who did not count in the least.  Nothing
+counted much, at the moment, except Mark and his
+unbelievable resurrection.  Yet she had no intention
+of going out with Lady Forsyth.  That was not her
+way.  Certain of his coming, she could wait.  Meantime
+her resurgent spirit, hungry for enjoyment, saw
+possibilities in the Seldon coincidence that might
+serve to pass the time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned smilingly to the suppressed volcano
+at her side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I say, Sheila, does Mr. Seldon know I'm coming?
+Does he know ... I'm engaged to Mark?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  We spoke of it last night."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did he say anything about meeting me before?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He seemed to remember the name," Sheila answered
+casually.  It was the truth, if not the whole
+truth; and she could not resist the chance of
+administering a flick to Bel's omnivorous vanity.  The
+flick told.  It also goaded Bel into further revelations
+than she had intended.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I fancy he'll remember more than my name
+when we meet," she remarked, looking out over the
+sodden December landscape.  "Not so very long ago
+I was accused of having spoilt his life and broken his
+heart: a tougher organism than sentimental people
+care to admit!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila betrayed no surprise.  She would not
+condescend to feign ignorance.  "You could hardly
+expect him to parade a broken heart in the
+circumstances," was all she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bel laughed.  "Well hit!  What a practical person
+you are.  I merely thought he might have told
+you, as you correspond and are evidently great
+friends."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila did not answer.  She was skilfully
+manipulating a sharp turn into the town.  Bel watched
+her in frank admiration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How awfully well you drive!  Who taught you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mr. Macnair."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh!  <i>I</i> always feel that man being horribly
+critical underneath.  But you're evidently privileged!
+Is <i>he</i>&mdash;another great friend?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mark, too!  You've quite a talent in that line."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila felt the light scratch under the velvet tone,
+and turned her clear eyes full on Bel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You mean&mdash;they don't fall in love with me?
+Well, sometimes friendship is the higher compliment."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sour grapes!" reflected Bel.  Aloud she said
+sweetly: "It's a compliment no man has ever paid
+me yet.  And I can do very well with ... the
+other thing.  Even if it results in only seeming to
+remember my name!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That was all for the moment.  But it set Sheila
+thoroughly on edge; nor were matters improved by
+Bel's behaviour throughout the evening.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Seldon she greeted without a shadow of embarrassment;
+asked after mutual acquaintances in Cornwall;
+smilingly held his gaze a moment; then, as it were,
+consigned him to Sheila, who missed no item of the
+by-play between them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Later on, though ostensibly devoting herself to
+Lady Forsyth and young Laurence, Bel never for a
+moment allowed Seldon to be unaware of her.  It was
+a situation that appealed to all the actress in her;
+and the whole performance was a piece of finished
+coquetry, perfect of its kind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As for Seldon, he clung to Sheila with nervous
+tenacity, as a man might cling to a talisman against
+witchcraft; but his eyes and ears and the back of his
+mind were intent on Bel.  He talked in spasms
+and his self-consciousness was more pronounced than
+ever.  Painfully he recalled the Seldon of Indian days:
+and before the evening was over Sheila had arrived
+at wondering could he, with open eyes, revert to the
+girl who had used him so ill?  Were his love and
+friendship for herself such mere card-houses that
+they could tumble to earth at a flicker of Bel's long
+eyelashes, a careless word from her lips?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The bare supposition was unflattering to say the
+least.  More; it was a shock to her young, ardent
+faith in human nature.  She had seen this man
+rise&mdash;in a measure through love of her&mdash;above his
+lesser self.  She had been proud of him and for him.
+Though he could marry neither of them, he was
+hers in a very special sense; and Bel had no right to
+him whatever.  But the heart, like the tongue, can
+no man tame; and Seldon's whole manner to Sheila
+that evening conveyed the mute attestation: "I am
+yours.  Yet, if she beckons, I follow in spite of
+myself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was not a heroic confession.  It angered Sheila,
+even while it moved her to pity.  She hated the
+whole distracting affair: and felt thankful that Lady
+Forsyth was incapable of perceiving anything but
+the one supreme fact: thankful, even, that she would
+soon be gone.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Next day came a telegram from Keith bidding
+her get a passport to Boulogne whither he would
+bring Mark&mdash;Authority permitting&mdash;in the
+Forsyth-Macnair ambulance car.  And for the time being,
+all lesser matters were in abeyance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bel decided not to go; and Lady Forsyth was too
+relieved to press the point.  Sheila did most of the
+packing and dropped a few secret, rebellious tears
+into Mark's valise.  It hurt her bitterly that she
+could not go too and complete the old happy quartet
+that had seemed linked indissolubly till Bel stepped
+into the picture and upset everything.  She had a
+knack of unsettling things whenever she appeared;
+and that without seeming to lift a finger.  In a minor
+way, she was doing it again; doing it admirably; while
+Sheila anointed Mark's familiar ties and shirts with
+her tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Quite incidentally it occurred to Lady Forsyth that
+five young people could not, without scandalising
+the proprieties, be left entirely to themselves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's ridiculous nonsense," she declared with a
+touch of impatience.  "And everyone's far too busy
+to be bothered.  Bel, how about your Harry?  Not
+married, of course, but still&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bel smiled.  "The more the safer, I suppose?
+It's quite a pretty problem in arithmetic: how many
+women, unmarried, equal one woman, married?
+Harry could come to-morrow, I think, for a few days."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good.  And Mrs. Laurence might manage the
+week end.  Wire at once, dear, will you?  Say I leave
+this afternoon.  I can't put off going for any
+Propriety-bogey in creation."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So that afternoon she set out on her glad errand,
+armed with letters and messages of welcome to him
+who, for five weeks, had been counted dead by all
+except two brave women in England and the two men
+who sought him in France.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Harry wired that she would come next day, and
+throughout that evening, Propriety&mdash;even in the
+person of Mrs. Clutterbuck&mdash;could have found
+nothing to cavil at in the behaviour of the five young
+people left temporarily unshepherded at Wynchcombe
+Friars.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Only Sheila became increasingly aware of the effect
+wrought upon Seldon by Bel's discreetly veiled
+coquetry.  Beneath his restlessness and his half-defiant
+flippancy, she discerned the man's inner flutterings
+that affected her like the sight of a live butterfly
+impaled by a pin.  She herself was quieter than
+usual; but under the still surface her anger was
+rising steadily; and before dinner was over, she
+knew that she could not sleep to-night, till she had
+spoken her mind to Bel.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0304"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER IV
+</h3>
+
+<p class="intro">
+"It is the worst of crimes to feel life so cheap, and make it so
+expensive for other people."&mdash;MARY A. HAMILTON.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Punctually at ten she made a move; and as she bid
+Seldon good night his eyes clung to her face with a
+pathetic mixture of apology and appeal.  It needed
+only that look to stiffen her resolve; though the last
+thing she wanted at the moment was a quarrel with
+Bel.  She hoped it might not amount to that; but she
+felt half afraid of her own inner tumult as she knocked
+lightly at Bel's door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She found the girl already half undressed, sitting
+before her glass in a cream-coloured wrapper, her pale
+hair falling to her waist.  Her face so framed, looked
+engagingly young.  She was smiling frankly at her
+own image; and an aftermath of the same smile
+served as greeting to her unexpected visitor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come for a talk?  How nice of you!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She indicated a chair near the fire; and Sheila,
+glad of the warmth, set one silver-shod foot on the
+fender.  But she remained standing&mdash;a slim grey
+figure with a knot of turquoise blue at her waist and a
+blue fillet threaded through the dark cloud of her
+hair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So, for the first time, they seriously confronted
+one another, these two&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm not so sure," said Sheila slowly, "that you'll
+think it nice of me when you hear what I have to
+say."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bel's eyes expressed polite enquiry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nothing very formidable, I hope?  And, for
+Heaven's sake, don't be tragic.  I've had enough
+tragedy, all these weeks, to last me a lifetime."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So have ... most of us," Sheila put in quietly.
+"And there's no question of tragedy, for any one, if
+you'll only leave poor Mr. Seldon alone."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, that's all, is it?  Hands off your property,
+in fact?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nothing of the sort."  Sheila's temper flared up,
+do what she would.  "Hands off a man who has
+suffered <i>more</i> than enough on your account already.
+I think if you realised how much&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Suffered&mdash;has he?  And poured it all into your
+sympathetic ears?  I rather suspected he was gone
+on you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, then&mdash;why can't you let him be?  Isn't one
+splendid lover enough for you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To possess&mdash;certainly," Bel answered with her
+invincible good-humour.  "That man Seldon's a
+mere invertebrate.  But he's clever, in his own way;
+and he amuses me.  If you don't want him for
+yourself, why in the world d'you bother about him?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Simply because he's a human being and he's made
+a plucky fight against things, and&mdash;he's my friend."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why not mine too?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Friendship is not one of your gifts, Bel.  The only
+kindness you can do him is&mdash;what I said: let him
+alone.  He mayn't be worth very much.  But he is
+worth something ... now.  Even you'd admit that
+if you'd seen him as I did, last autumn: a wretched
+cynical man with no heart in his work.  Drinking
+too, from sheer loneliness and ill-health.  And so
+obviously needing a woman in his life that it was hard
+to refuse him.  In the end&mdash;that I mightn't think too
+badly of him&mdash;he told me about that summer in
+Cornwall.  And ... to think it should have been
+you!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Something in her tone drew Bel's eyes to her face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, what harm?  I didn't commit murder.  I
+refused him&mdash;as you did.  That's all."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's <i>not</i> all," Sheila flashed out.  "Bel&mdash;don't
+prevaricate.  He ... he told me everything."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bel started and a faintly hostile gleam showed in
+her eyes.  Then, very deliberately, she combed back a
+lock that had fallen half over her face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"May I ask&mdash;what 'everything' amounted to?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila moistened her lips.  "Well ... the way
+you simply made use of him to secure that other man
+... the married one.  Mr. Seldon heard afterwards
+that you&mdash;went away with him.  That he didn't
+believe, except when he felt bitter enough to believe
+anything.  Bel&mdash;<i>is</i> it true?  Any of it?  I <i>must</i>
+know."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She spoke with unguarded urgency; and Bel turned
+clear hard eyes upon her.  The hostile gleam was no
+longer faint.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why must you know what is entirely my own affair?
+In order to tell Lady Forsyth, or Mark, and make
+trouble between us, after all I've just been through?
+Model of virtue though you are, I believe you'd give
+your beautiful violet eyes to put Mark out of love
+with me.  But you never will.  Men don't easily
+leave off loving me.  Mr. Seldon's a case in point.  I
+understand one side of them.  And I understand it
+thoroughly.  Mark's a bit straight-laced about some
+things.  But he's tremendously a man.  And he'll
+love <i>me</i>&mdash;worthless me&mdash;to the end of the chapter,
+whatever I may have done, or do!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila&mdash;amazed, disgusted and angrier than ever&mdash;had
+listened so far without interruption, simply because
+she could not trust herself to speak.  At that
+moment she hated Bel, as she had never hated any
+fellow-being; and her white Northern anger would
+rather have vented itself in blows than words.  But,
+by this time, she had herself in hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>I</i> tell Mark?" she said, on a note of concentrated
+scorn, ignoring the implication of her motive.  "It's
+for you to tell him&mdash;whatever there is to tell."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bel let out a breath of relief.  "Then he'll remain
+in blessed ignorance.  Men don't bore us with a recital
+of their pre-nuptial peccadilloes.  They've too much
+sense.  So why the dickens should we inflict ours on
+them?  I'm a modern woman, Sheila.  You're not:
+for all you're the younger.  And Mark himself isn't
+quite modern enough for my taste.  It's my only
+quarrel with him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had quite recovered her complacence now.
+Tilting her head, she swept the brush through her long
+fine hair: and Sheila stood watching her a moment,
+fascinated unwillingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then with a small sigh she sat down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I rather think," she said slowly, "that, if this
+war goes on long enough, it is you up-to-date people
+who will end in being out-of-date.  But Bel&mdash;" she
+hesitated.  Fuller knowledge would serve no purpose
+save to increase her own secret misery.  Yet,
+perversely, she still wanted to know.  "Are you
+admitting that what Mr. Seldon heard was true?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Just true enough to be a spiteful lie," Bel answered
+enigmatically, discarding her brush and resting
+her bare arms on the table.  "What are you getting
+at, you determined little person?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The truth&mdash;if I can.  I don't want to be unjust
+to you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very scrupulous!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bel paused a moment, smiling at her own image
+... considering....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was not given to verbal indiscretions, but she
+had her reckless impulses: and with Sheila she
+instinctively knew herself safe; knew that the truth
+demanded of her by this gentle, inexorable girl would
+hurt the more because&mdash;for very love of Mark and
+his mother&mdash;Sheila could be trusted to keep silence.
+Hidden knowledge of that kind rankles and pricks,
+as Bel had learnt from experience; and her own galling
+sense of Sheila's finer loyalty and courage made the
+impulse to hurt and startle her irresistible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well," she said at length, turning from the glass,
+just as Sheila had given up hope of hearing more,
+"as you evidently won't play the sneak, I don't mind
+admitting that I had every intention of going off with
+that other man to Australia.  I was at a loose end:
+in the mood for any escape from humdrum England
+and sufficiently in love to be tempted.  It was Harry,
+with her awkward genius for rescue-work, who upset
+the apple-cart.  So my 'going off' with him amounted
+to no more than a week end together at the Lizard&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Bel!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't look so scarified, my dear innocent!  Heaps
+of the smartest girls do that sort of thing;&mdash;or rather
+did, in happier days than these.  And properly
+modern-minded men condoned it.  If you're for
+giving women freedom you can't tie them by the leg
+to the conventional moralities; and I wasn't going to
+take such a big risk without due consideration.  So
+he found rooms in a wee cottage at the Lizard and
+we went there&mdash;as temporary brother and sister&mdash;to
+do the considering.  He behaved beautifully;
+and, in the end, we decided to take the plunge.  Harry
+happened to be in Cornwall just then, tackling a
+troublesome 'case'.  So I arranged to go to her and
+join him in London when he wired.  But somehow,
+she suspicioned what was up: and as she believes in
+the emancipation of woman, I thought she'd take it
+reasonably.  However&mdash;she didn't; and there was the
+devil to pay.  I stood out against her; but she got
+at him and worked him up over his precious children.
+So the great adventure fizzled out.  And Harry,
+having rescued me, has stuck to me ever since.  I
+suppose some of the fools at Bude heard we'd been to
+the Lizard and invented the rest.  There!  That's the
+extent of my villainy.  The whole thing's dead and
+gone, and you must admit I'd be a prize fool to tell
+Mark.  He'd worry needlessly; and distrust me.
+Also needlessly.  If any man can hold a woman, it's
+Mark.  Of course you think I'm not fit to black his
+boots.  I'm not.  I've told him so.  But it's me
+he wants, my dear,&mdash;good or bad.  Look here,
+though; not a word of all this to your
+'Mums.'  She'd never forgive me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No.  Never."  Sheila's cheeks were flushed and
+her lips set.  "I'm not sure that ... Mark would
+either.  I simply can't understand...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Didn't suppose you would."  Bel smiled sweetly.
+"You're too limited.  That's the trouble with you
+good people&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mark's not limited," Sheila broke out with
+sudden passion.  "No more is Mums.  Oh&mdash;and to
+think I told her, without knowing it ... the very day
+you two were out in the yacht&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That day?  Really, this approaches the dramatic!
+But never you give her the key to your story.  Promise!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila sighed.  "I'm not likely to&mdash;for her sake;
+though it isn't easy keeping anything from Mums.
+We're so close to each other all through."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, you must manage it somehow," Bel said
+with decision.  "And I expect you have your
+reserves even from her.  Have you ever, I wonder, let
+her realise that you're dead in love&mdash;with Mark?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How <i>dare</i> you!" Sheila broke in low and fiercely,
+"when I've tried to do you justice&mdash;to be friends&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She checked herself, rose, and turned her back on
+Bel, grasping the mantelpiece with her small fine
+hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl surveyed her in genuine surprise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm sorry," she said good-naturedly.  "One
+would think I'd accused you of stealing!  It's no
+sin!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila swung round in an access of sheer impatience.
+"This time it's <i>you</i> who don't understand!  If that
+sort of thing's not sacred to you, it is to me&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bel faintly raised her brows.  "No," she said,
+"I don't understand people who mix up falling in
+love with religion.  To me, it's simply the most
+thrilling amusement on earth.  Still, I'm sorry&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You're not," Sheila retorted, unappeased.  "And
+I'd like you better if you said so, honestly.  <i>I'm</i>
+sorry I ever came in here at all.  Good night."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She moved to the door; but softly and swiftly as a
+cat Bel sped after her and took her by the shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sheila, my dear, don't be a high-flown little fool,"
+she said in her seductive voice that was seldom wasted
+on a woman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, let me alone, I'm tired," Sheila murmured,
+and shook off the detaining hand, only to find it
+slipped through her arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come and make it up.  Then I'll let you go,"
+Bel cooed invitingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was detestable; but Sheila was genuinely tired
+and too disgusted for further argument.  Unresisting,
+and unresponsive, she allowed herself to be drawn
+back to the fire and gently pulled down into the chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You're such a lovesome morsel of dignity and
+reserve," Bel went on, kneeling beside her and warming
+her hands.  "It's quite an achievement to have drawn
+you out a little.  I can't let you shut up again with
+a click.  Besides, we must be friends <i>now</i>!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila, who was hardly attending, did not grasp
+the import of that last remark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm not altogether depraved, you know."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I never said you were."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But you thought so."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila merely shook her head.  She had no further
+desire to discuss Bel or her very mixed attributes;
+but, for Bel, there was no more congenial subject on
+earth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You <i>did</i> think so," she insisted, with untroubled
+conviction.  "But I do try to be decent, up to my
+lights.  Can't help it&mdash;can I?&mdash;if mine are candles
+and yours are stars?  And I admit this beastly war
+has demoralized me badly.  Your Mums talks of it
+as a 'refiner's fire'; but ... I don't know.  That
+sort of thing doesn't agree with everyone.  It may
+exalt the good; but ... I rather think it makes the
+bad worse."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila nodded.  "It finds us all out.  It's burning
+away the husks of life and forcing us to be our
+real selves.&mdash;<i>My</i> real self, at this moment," she added
+lightly, "is a mere log of weariness.  I must go now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very well&mdash;go.  Good night, dear."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bel put up her face for a kiss; but Sheila was on her
+feet again.  "<i>Will</i> you leave Mr. Seldon alone?"
+she said returning to her original attack.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll try&mdash;just to please you!  But you can't
+blame <i>me</i> if the man's a mere weather-cock."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I do blame you&mdash;all along the line," Sheila
+answered with quiet obstinacy; and at last effected her
+escape.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But for all her weariness, sleep was long in coming.
+Though her lids were heavy, her brain was wide
+awake and haunted distractingly by visions of Bel; her
+smiling self-complacence, her graceful, studied poses,
+her serene assurance&mdash;cruelly emphasised&mdash;that no
+revelation of her intrinsic worthlessness would affect
+her dominion over Mark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Was that true, Sheila wondered, feeling of a sudden
+very ignorant and limited&mdash;as Bel had said?  Would
+it make no difference even if he knew all?  Was
+a man's love so entirely a mixture of infatuation
+and passion that the soul of a woman counted for
+next to nothing?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Personally, Sheila did not believe it; but she was
+too young, too untravelled in the heart's byways, to
+feel secure in that belief.  She only saw Mark, her
+god among men, lured and held by this elf-maiden
+of a girl; fair without, hollow within.  Mr. Seldon,
+too&mdash;in spite of all he had suffered, in spite of genuine
+love for herself&mdash;seemed powerless to hold his own
+against Bel.  And was it only Bel?  Was it only
+Mark and Seldon?  Or, was their private tangle
+simply part of the cruel, primitive essence of things?
+Sheila lying there in the dark, pictured hundreds of
+Bels dragging down hundreds of Marks and Seldons;
+and her protective, mother-tenderness for the masculine
+half of creation, raged impotently against it all.
+One heard so much, in these outspoken days, about
+men ruining women.  Was there not fully as much to
+be said about women ruining men?  Between sleep and
+waking her mind dwelt long on this side of a question
+that touched her so nearly.  The mixed emotions of the
+last few days and the need to keep them hidden, had put
+a severe strain on her.  And closer contact with Bel
+seemed to have rubbed the bloom off life; to have
+shaken her faith in the nature of things&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her heart, in its loneliness, yearned for the dear
+comrade-woman; mother, sister, and friend in one;
+who could light up even the dark places of life with
+the fire of her brave enthusiasm.  Soon they would
+all be together, they three: while she, who was
+intrinsically one with them, remained out in the cold;
+and must so remain&mdash;as Bel had smilingly assured
+her&mdash;to the end of the chapter.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0305"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER V
+</h3>
+
+<p class="intro2">
+  "And the land shall leave me or take, and the Woman shall<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;take me or leave me....<br>
+  But Life shall hold me alive, and Death shall never deceive me,<br>
+  As long as I walk in England, in the lanes that let me pass."<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;CHESTERTON.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+It was accomplished.  The faith and courage of
+Helen Forsyth had reaped their due reward; and
+they three were together at last.  But not yet under
+one roof.  The instant Mark emerged from supposed
+extinction, Authority claimed him; and Helen rebelled
+a little, inevitably against cast-iron regulations that
+withheld her from taking immediate possession of her
+own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile she was thankful, on reaching the
+hospital, to find him in a small room with two other
+empty beds.  Ignoring the chair that had been set for
+her, she knelt beside him, her face radiating a silent
+benediction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Prostrate, paralysed, his reddish hair almost hidden
+by the cap-like bandage, he lay there smiling his
+queer, crooked smile and his lashes were wet with
+tears.  When one or two of them escaped and ran
+down his cheek, she wiped them away with her
+handkerchief and leaning over him kissed his eyelids.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He frowned as if vexed at his own weakness, but she
+shook her head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We needn't think shame of them," she said,
+for her own were falling.  "It's natural.  Just the
+blessed reaction.  Don't you remember your favourite
+bit of Blake?  '"Damn" braces, "bless" relaxes.'"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He smiled and pressed the hand he was clinging
+to in a fashion that recalled nursery days when some
+nightmare had so shaken him that he must hold
+her to make sure she was really there.  And to-day
+in this first, incredible hour of reunion, both
+felt unashamedly the childish need of that same
+reassurance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As his hand clung to hers, so her eyes clung to his
+face; and she saw now that he was making a desperate
+effort to speak.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, no.  Bad for you, beloved," she said.  "I
+understand."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he would not be baulked of achievement; so
+strong was the current of new life in his veins.  And
+the words came at last; though, till they were out, he
+could not be sure whether sense or nonsense would
+emerge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"M-Mother&mdash;Mums&mdash;Home!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He brought them out, one by one; the last with
+triumphant emphasis and a stronger grip on her hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes&mdash;home the first possible minute," she assured
+him.  "A Nursing Home first, I'm afraid, for some
+time.  We've been wondering if we could put off the
+operation till we get across, as it's been delayed so
+long already.  The doctor here will see your head
+to-night and decide.  Of course half our best men are
+on the spot.  But it might keep us here weeks; and
+it's England you want, isn't it, darling,&mdash;and Bel?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He nodded, then suddenly releasing her hand, he
+put his left arm round her drawing her down to
+him....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was still holding her thus when the inexorable
+knock sounded on the door.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+That night it was decided that no harm would
+arise from a few days' delay: and Authority made
+arrangements accordingly; thrusting its ruthless arm
+once again between Helen and her son.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For Mark, the mere exigencies of travelling
+emphasised his own vexatious helplessness, so that he
+understood, for the first time, something of the
+monkish attitude towards the body as a despised
+and hampering burden, rather than the beautiful
+disciplined servant of the spirit: but he was cheered
+beyond measure, by the sight and smell of the sea
+and the faint salt of it on his lips.  For the sea spelt
+England: and England&mdash;Bel; haloed and idealised,
+by this time, beyond the height of mortal woman.
+While he lay on deck, delighting in wind-driven
+clouds and wind-tossed waters, memories crowded
+thick upon him....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He hated losing sight of Keith and his mother
+even for a few hours: but his spirits rose steadily
+as the steamer, mysteriously safe-guarded, nosed
+her way toward the cliffs of Home.  It was still
+something of a wonder simply to be back again in the world
+of men; to see papers, as a matter of course, and to
+know more or less what was happening in that complex
+maze of trenches that now cleft France from the
+Vosges to the sea and changed the whole character
+of the War.  Wounded officers, who had heard his
+story, came up to congratulate him and stayed to tell
+their own experiences.  It was good to hear them,
+though conversation was a distractingly one-sided
+affair: good to see, at last, the white cliffs of Kent, lit
+by a frail ray of winter sunshine; to glide up alongside
+the familiar quay with its cheering crowd, and to
+hear the rough speech of his own people.  It was
+better still to watch Keith pushing his way through
+them all, with a new uprightness and a squarer set of
+his shoulders, though the weeks of anxious search had
+left their mark on his rugged face.  And there, at his
+elbow, was "Mums" looking out eagerly for her "boy."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His glimpse of them was brief but reassuring.
+Then it was: "See you again in London": and for all
+he longed to speed straight to Wynchcombe Friars,
+the spell of the great grey city, throned upon its grey
+river, under a shifting pall of fog, penetrated, as
+never before, to the deep places of his imagination
+and his heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The squalor of her back alleys was shrouded in
+darkness.  Her great thoroughfares were dimmed
+and emptier than of old.  As they drove away from
+the station, ragged flakes of snow and sleet were
+falling, and sharp against a blurred background
+loomed the stately splendour of the Abbey, the
+Houses, and Big Ben.  For him that shadowy mass of
+architecture possessed something of the sublimity
+and the aloofness of a great mountain range: and
+to-night, above all, it was a vision to lift the heart of
+one mere Englishman in thankfulness and praise....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His destination was a Nursing Home for Officers in
+Park Lane&mdash;a paradise of ordered comfort and
+spotlessness and peace, where the hum of London's
+unresting voice sounded scarcely louder than the
+breaking of waves upon a stony shore.  Here his
+mother reappeared to bid him welcome and good
+night.  She had found rooms, she told him, in a hotel
+close by: and&mdash;yes, Bel was downstairs waiting for
+permission to come up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A quarter of an hour&mdash;no longer, the Nurse decreed.
+And presently she came&mdash;a vision supremely satisfying
+to the eye.  Her simple, costly-looking coat and
+skirt were only a few shades darker than her hair.
+On the brim of her beaver hat rested one yellow velvet
+flower; and she wore her amber beads over a yellow
+blouse.  Every detail had been carefully thought
+out; and the result, as she swiftly perceived, was
+very much to his taste.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But this new Mark, who in a few short months had
+plumbed the heights and depths of human experience,
+craved more from the woman he had been sedulously
+glorifying than perfect finish of colour and form.
+And he could neither utter that craving nor appraise
+her with the sugar-plum compliments she loved.
+He could only hold out his left hand and smile his
+crooked smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An attempt to speak her name produced only such
+a strange, unnatural sound that she winced, ever so
+slightly, and the blood mounted to his face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pricked with genuine pity and remorse she swept
+to him and caught his hand in both her own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Darling&mdash;darling, don't try," she said in her
+cooing voice of tenderness.  "All in good time.
+You're a wonder and a miracle to be here at all."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then&mdash;conquering his sudden painful shyness&mdash;he
+pulled her nearer; and, as she stooped to kiss him,
+captured her with his arm.  For the moment he asked
+nothing on earth but the sense of her living presence,
+the soft surrender of her lips.  Ecstasy flowed through
+him: short-lived, but fiery sweet&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Loosening his hold, he pulled at her hat.  She sat
+back on the low chair facing him, removed the hat,
+and considered it with critical approval.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Bought for the occasion!" she explained.  "Rather
+a gem, isn't it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He nodded, smiling, and fingering her beads; and
+she, suddenly slipping on to her knees, hid her face
+against him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Comforted exceedingly, he caressed her hair, and
+found courage for a fresh effort to speak.  This time
+he succeeded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Beautiful&mdash;my Bel," he said slowly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She lifted her face and smiled at him: flushed but
+dry-eyed.  "Yes&mdash;your Bel.  And you're going to shake
+off this horror as soon as possible; so that we can stick
+to our original date in spite of the war and its
+abominations.  There&mdash;I <i>must</i> go.  I hear Nurse coming."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She picked up the precious hat and stood before
+the over-mantel pinning it on.  Then she sighed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, <i>won't</i> I be thankful when to-morrow's well
+over.  Sleep sound, darling, and I'll hope to see you
+in the morning."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She kissed him again and vanished with a parting
+wave of the hand.  And he lay a long while brooding
+on the day's events: his body too tired and his brain
+too full of impressions for coherent thought....
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Next morning, before the operation, he had a brief
+glimpse of her.  Then his mother came, with
+Sheila&mdash;graver, paler, and, in some indefinable fashion,
+lovelier than he seemed to remember her.  But of
+late her image had been kept well in the background
+of his brain: and it smote him now the more poignantly
+as if in revenge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His hand closed firmly on hers and kept it
+imprisoned, while she stood there smiling at him through
+tears.  Yesterday's failure made him shy of attempting
+her name.  His gaze travelled from her face to his
+mother's and back again: and at last he spoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All my thanks&mdash;for Mums," he said and with an
+abrupt movement pressed her fingers to his lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he released them and her pale face glowed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mark, don't thank me," she murmured.  "It
+was simply ... we were everything to each other,
+and it helped us to pull through.  Some day when
+she's not there, I'll tell you just how splendid she
+was.  And I want to hear about the Nun who wrote
+that letter.  She must be a jewel.  When all this is
+well over, we'll have a real long talk!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Mark, more than ever enamoured of her
+musical voice, felt ridiculously elated at the prospect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even this unsatisfactory lop-sided talk was over
+too soon: the eminent surgeon had arrived; and
+they must surrender him to the saving mercy of
+chloroform and the knife.  Is the whole enlightened
+race of man ever anything but ungrateful to these
+grim agents of salvation&mdash;at least until the beloved
+is safe out of the toils?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Forsyth's heart failed her badly as she stooped
+to kiss her son.  But seeing the tense set of his lips,
+she spoke more bravely than she felt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We've no reason at all to feel nervous, darling,"
+she said low in his ear.  "I have Dr. Norton's word
+for it.  He says your condition's excellent and it
+ought to be quite plain sailing.  Keith is downstairs;
+and we won't leave till everything is well over.  God
+keep you safe&mdash;till I see you again."
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0306"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER VI
+</h3>
+
+<p class="intro2">
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"... No longer can I cast<br>
+  A glory round about this head of gold.<br>
+  Glory she wears, but springing from the mould;<br>
+  Not like the consecration of the past."<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;MEREDITH.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Dr. Norton proved no false prophet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ten days later a very much revived Mark lay
+propped up in bed, while his mother sat by him, reading
+aloud, with emphatic relish, an outspoken article
+from the <i>National Review</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The loyal, universal confidence accorded, in August,
+to a Government mainly responsible for the failure to
+save Belgium, was already on the wane.  The political
+leopard, it appeared, could not change his spots
+even to preserve the British Empire from ruin.
+Increasingly the note of criticism replaced the note of
+confidence: and to none did the change seem more
+ominous than to Helen Forsyth and her son.  But
+for Mark, at the moment, no larger anxieties could
+cloud the joy of regaining his grip on life; of watching
+his mother's expressive face as she snapped the thread
+of a sentence to acclaim here or denounce there; till
+he longed for command of speech to lure her into one
+of their arguments that, for her, were at once an
+exasperation and a delight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Words came more readily now; but still at times,
+they played him ludicrous and disconcerting tricks,
+that were not always matter for mirth.  Bel&mdash;whose
+sense of humour was an uncertain quantity&mdash;too
+often winced at them; and then they covered him
+with confusion or pricked him to momentary irritation
+with her.  They would pass, he assured her, as the
+brain reasserted its full control.  The fact that it had
+proved to be slightly torn would retard things a little;
+but already he began to move his right hand; and in
+time recovery would be complete.  They must have
+patience: that was all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She proclaimed herself a miracle of patience; but
+there were days when he suspected her of being
+faintly bored; when her cheerfully persistent injunction
+to "hurry up and get well" had, to his sensitive
+ear, an almost metallic ring.  Work and the war and
+the strain of real suffering had wrought inner changes
+of which he became gradually aware.  The fine film
+of hardness, that dismayed Lady Forsyth, had not
+been altogether dissolved even by those first wonderful
+days of reunion; and now when she spoke of painful
+things, it was fatally apparent to Mark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was, in fact, beginning to perceive the woman
+beneath the glamour; yet the glamour remained, in
+spite of disillusion.  Only when he looked into the
+future, or was tired and alone, the old distracting
+doubts assailed him.  For purposes of love-making she
+was inimitable.  To that end, she was born.  For
+the larger purposes of wifehood, motherhood,
+companionship:&mdash;well, he had chosen her and he must take his
+chance&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And all the while, he tried not to be aware that he
+was watching for one face, waiting for the "real long
+talk" she had promised him.  Others came with
+increasing frequency; but she never reappeared.  What
+was wrong?  The uncertainty grew distracting; but he
+felt reluctant to speak of her, these days; and when at
+last, he achieved a casual question to his mother,
+nervousness made it one of his failures.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Where is&mdash;become&mdash;Colette?" was the conundrum
+that emerged.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I wrote to her, dear," Lady Forsyth answered,
+pleased at his remembering.  "But I haven't heard
+yet."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He frowned impatiently.  "D-damn it!  I mean&mdash;Sheila?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he learnt that her mother had claimed her for
+work at Westover Court, where a number of half
+convalescent nervous cases were in need of massage
+and Mrs. Melrose was short of skilled hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sheila is quite wonderful at it," Lady Forsyth
+added.  "A genuine gift.  More magnetism than
+massage, I verily believe."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark smiled at her enthusiasm, but asked no more
+questions.  His belated discovery must not be
+suffered to get out of hand....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So far, he had been a very saint for patience.  But
+as vigour increased, irritability increased also.  In
+certain moods, the monotony, the dependence, the
+rubber-tyred routine of the hospital existence irked
+him to exasperation; and if he were alone with Keith
+he would let off steam, in an outburst of wholesome
+profanity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did his best not to upset the women; but when a
+rare fine day flung panels of sunshine across the carpet
+and a frolic wind set the blind-tassels tap-tapping on
+the windows he felt like a caged thing.  No garden
+here, as in France, where at least he could commune
+with trees and sky: and it was no garden he wanted
+now.  It was the road or the heather underfoot;
+the wilds of Hampshire, the rolling hills of his native
+Argyll; the sea-salt and heather-fragrant air that, for
+him, was like no other air on earth.  He wanted simply
+to walk and walk, world without end; only Bobs for
+company; Bobs, who most certainly was not forgetting
+his master, though he was accepting with true canine
+philosophy the homage paid him by the house of
+Russell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One night he dreamed of a kingly tramp among
+the hills and glens beyond Inveraig: Keith walked
+beside him, while Bobs put the fear of God into rabbits,
+visible and invisible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So vivid was the dream that he awoke with the dog's
+bark and Keith's voice sounding in his ears&mdash;woke to
+find he could scarcely shift himself in bed without help.
+The contrast jarred so painfully that he cursed that
+delusive dream and decided to ask a few straight
+questions when Dr. Norton came, if his unruly
+member would permit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They had subjected him to a thorough overhauling
+the day before: but of information not a crumb could
+he extract from them, beyond vague encouragement
+and counsels of patience.  And this morning he fared
+very little better at Dr. Norton's hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Norton was a lean tall man, with a humorous
+grey-green eye and, on occasion, a slightly caustic
+tongue.  He had taken a great liking to this virile,
+sensitive patient of his; who could thoroughly enjoy
+a joke at his own expense.  But, for all that, even
+Mark's direct demand for enlightenment failed to
+entice him from the cautious reserve of his kind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My dear Sir Mark," he said, a gleam of sympathy
+in his grave eye, "it's hardly fair to fling leading
+questions at men whose reputation might not be
+worth an hour's purchase if they took to scattering
+inaccurate prophecies among their patients!  The
+damage to your brain was slight considering what it
+might have been.  With that well-seasoned puttee for
+a first aid bandage, it's a miracle you didn't die of
+septic meningitis within a week.  The main thing to
+guard against now is nerve trouble: if you let yourself
+get worried or uncontrolled.  With luck we shall
+have you out of bed in a week.  But it may be more
+like a month before we can let you out of this."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh&mdash;<i>damn</i>!"  The "good old word of sin" seldom
+failed him at command.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Quite so," Norton remarked in his even voice.
+"It's beastly having to lie up when you don't feel ill.
+At the same time&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, of course&mdash;all those other chaps," Mark
+broke in, feeling suddenly very much ashamed of
+himself.  "Lucky enough getting away&mdash;intact.  I won't
+worry.  I'll&mdash;what's it they say out there&mdash;carry on!"
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+But for some reason&mdash;whether because of his dream
+or because of Dr. Norton's guarded statement,
+that morning marked a point from which his hopefulness
+flagged; and the atmosphere about him seemed
+to suffer some indefinable change that gave Norton's
+injunction not to worry a slightly satirical tang.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He became too keenly conscious of sympathy in the
+air; and the more tactfully it was implied, the worse it
+jarred.  His kind, attentive Nurse seemed suddenly
+kinder, more attentive.  His mother's lively humour
+sounded, at times, a trifle strained.  More than once
+he caught his mother gazing at him with a yearning
+wistfulness that he had either not noticed or not
+encountered before.  She managed to laugh it off; but
+it haunted him afterwards.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Worse than all, he detected a fine shade of difference
+in Bel: at times a hint of constraint in her manner
+that he tried to dismiss as pure fantasy; at times, a
+passion of affection, very rare with her.  There was
+less of mere lovers' talk between them now: and in the
+intervals, a paucity of common interests was revealed.
+Very often she would read to him; and her visits were
+growing less regular.  Some days she did not come at
+all; but sent a hurried affectionate note of excuses,
+lean diet for a man who needed companionship as
+never before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Sheila, except for an occasional letter, appeared
+to have deserted him utterly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He put up with this state of things for a week:
+during which time his arm and speech made good
+progress towards recovery.  Then, suddenly, his
+patience gave out and he decided to tackle Keith,
+the only one whose bearing had suffered no perceptible
+change.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Keith had been away for a few days at Montrose;
+but he was due in Town that morning: and he came
+straight from the station to Park Lane.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked noticeably tired and worn: but Mark,
+just then, was fiercely intent on his own
+determination to be rid of half truths.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You&mdash;you damned lucky devil!" he broke out,
+holding on to Keith's hand and searching his eyes
+hungrily for knowledge withheld.  "Scotland&mdash;mountains&mdash;the
+sea!  And I lie here&mdash;cursing.  How much
+taller&mdash;" the word eluded him and gesture failed&mdash;"Oh,
+<i>you</i> know ... yard measure&mdash;longer?  They
+won't tell me.  Those infernal doctors.  I'm&mdash;no
+coward.  Let's have the damage straight.  My legs
+... rotten, useless.  Don't improve."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Keith shook his head, pain unconcealed in his eyes.
+Then he sat down by the bed and faced the ordeal
+thrust upon him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The chances are&mdash;they won't&mdash;improve," he
+said slowly.  "That's the damage, Mark.  Your
+spine."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark set his teeth and was silent.  The breath of
+tragedy had clean blown out the rushlight of
+impatience.  Keith hoped that Helen would never see
+him look as he looked then.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I gather they didn't mend matters ... dragging
+you to that farm," Keith went on in his low, contained
+voice.  "Not their fault, poor fellows.  Very bad
+ground, Macgregor said; and they were wounded
+and under fire.  But the result is&mdash;a lesion&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Lesion," Mark repeated frowning with the
+effort of thought.  "Medical stuff.  In plain English
+... I'm done for ... physically.  That it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Keith was silent a moment.  "That's ... about
+it: so far as they can tell at present.  But there's just
+a possibility of gradual improvement.  A very slow
+business.  And, at best, Dr. Norton fears recovery
+would only be partial&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thanks very much."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The quiet courtesy of his tone pierced Keith to the
+heart.  He would infinitely sooner have heard Mark
+swear.  The swearing was bound to come, soon or
+late, and it would be a relief for both.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At present, he merely closed his eyes and lay
+silent a long, long while, facing naked and unlovely
+facts with his vivid, forward-looking artist's brain....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some fool had once said: "<i>Never</i> is a long word";
+but no word ever coined was interminable enough to
+suggest the unnumbered army of days that threatened
+him&mdash;that was the literal effect&mdash;between seven
+and twenty and the merciful end of all.  Try as he
+would, he could not believe in it&mdash;yet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the others&mdash;they had known it a week or more.
+It must have been hell for them; and it explained
+everything.  Most startlingly, it explained&mdash;Bel.  If
+she had seemed, on occasion, to weary of an invalid
+lover, what manner of use would she have for a
+husband chained to a wheeled chair?  Had he any shadow
+of right to hold her&mdash;now?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Unable to endure the torment of thought, he
+opened his eyes.  Keith still sat there, one elbow
+on the bed; his hand across his forehead shutting out
+the vision of Mark's face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Keith, old man," he said, and Keith looked up with
+a start.  "Don't you worry.  I can&mdash;stick it.  Others,
+worse off&mdash;eh?  Half a life&mdash;half a loaf&mdash;"  He struggled
+to complete the connection; and failing, tried to
+smile.  "Mother?" he asked sharply and Keith drew
+in his lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No thought of herself.  Only you!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then came the word he hardly dared speak.  "Bel?
+She knows too?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  She knows."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another long pause: but he forced himself to go on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Keith&mdash;can I?  Ought I&mdash;?  Must I lose <i>every</i>
+thing?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The words came out in a sudden rush.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That depends&mdash;" Keith answered with slow
+emphasis&mdash;"on her.  Naturally&mdash;she is free, if she
+chooses.  But she has every right to refuse freedom;
+to wait ... on the chance....  Picture your mother
+in such a case."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark pictured her; and knew very well that no
+lover of hers, so placed, would have need to fear the
+double loss.  But Bel&mdash;?  How imperfectly he knew
+her, how utterly unsure he was of her even now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why did they keep it from me?" he asked irrelevantly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"They were afraid for your head, till the three weeks
+were up."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Weeks?&mdash;what are weeks?" Mark murmured.
+"Look here&mdash;they must leave me alone a bit.  Tell
+them.  An hour or two.  I'll ring."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very well.  I will come again, this afternoon."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Keith held out his hand and their mutual grasp
+supplied all racial disabilities.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+They left him alone the greater part of that morning;
+alone with the news that had come down on him
+like a guillotine snapping his life in two.  It struck
+him, in his first access of bitterness, that the guillotine
+would have been the more merciful fate&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the one practical problem of the moment was
+Bel.  It amazed and hurt him to realise how little he
+could foretell her line of action in this cruel dilemma.
+Almost, he could see her rising, dramatically, superbly,
+to the heroic plane.  The difficulty was to see her
+keeping it up.  Throughout all her past "phases"
+he detected that same incapacity running like a fatal
+thread.  Though it pleased her to pose as a rebel,
+her instinctive skill lay, rather, in graceful evasion of
+circumstances that threatened to prove too strong for
+her.  Would she regard a crippled husband as a
+circumstance that called for graceful evasion?  That
+question she alone could answer.  And how&mdash;and
+when was he to ask it?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He could not yet write; and, like all strong natures,
+he inclined to the spoken word if anything unpleasant
+must be done; but he still felt quite unfit for the strain
+of a scene that might end disastrously.  He would of
+a certainty be tripped up by egregious verbal lapses,
+that, at such a moment, would be intolerable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If she came, however, he must see her and take his
+chance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She did not come; and the uncertainty, following
+on the shock of knowledge, was none too good for
+his nerves.  Dr. Norton advised a sleeping draught
+that afternoon and another at night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These gave him brief and merciful respite from the
+torment of thought: but morning brought fresh
+realisation, fresh perplexity.  It also brought a letter
+from Bel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He scarcely dared open it.  Did she know that he
+knew?  And was she too great a coward to face his
+pain?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her short note answered neither question.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+"Darling Man," she wrote, "this is to tell you that
+Harry and I must run down to Folkestone for three
+or four days on account of her work.  A big meeting,
+for one thing; and she wants me to speak.  I'm rather
+keen about it.  Not so sure I haven't found my real
+vocation at last.  I looked in yesterday evening to
+say good-bye: but Nurse said you were asleep and
+not on any account to be disturbed.  So the kisses
+must be stored up for a few days.  Forgive this hurried
+scrawl.  I'll write again from Folkestone.  Always
+your so loving Bel."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+He read that "hurried scrawl" several times over
+without arriving at any clear conclusion, except the
+obvious one that matters must stand over till her
+return; unless he could bring himself to write through
+his mother, an expedient that did not commend itself,
+except as a last resort.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0307"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER VII
+</h3>
+
+<p class="intro2">
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"God's own gifts<br>
+  Have a devil for the weak.<br>
+  Yea the very force that lifts<br>
+  Finds the vessel's secret leak."<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;MEREDITH.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Bel's maiden speech at Folkestone proved an
+unqualified success.  Her sweet, well-modulated voice,
+hardly suitable for platform purposes, carried well
+enough in Mrs. Langton's double drawing-room
+where some sixty ardent feminists and pacifists, of
+both sexes, were gathered together mainly for the
+glorification of woman&mdash;as martyr in chief of man's
+recurrent lust for slaughter, and as the normal
+promoter of peace between nations, whose eyes were
+blinded with blood and wrath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Characteristically, she had concealed from Mark
+the real nature of the meeting and the subject-matter
+of her own speech.  This last, as may be supposed,
+emanated from Harry, though declaimed and decorated
+by Bel.  The Utopian vision of universal peace had
+caught hold of her imagination.  The fact that the
+world's harmony spelt comfort and material prosperity
+made a direct appeal to her practical brain: and
+now the shadow of her own private tragedy seemed
+more than ever to justify her leaning towards those
+who denounced as criminal the ruthless indefinite
+prolongation of war.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Woman and War";&mdash;the antithesis lent itself
+to a rhetorical opening, a study in contrasts: and Bel
+made the most of it.  War destroys life; woman
+creates and beautifies it.  War is brutality and
+coarseness <i>in excelsis</i>; woman is all tenderness
+and grace.  War stands for hate; woman for love.
+War degrades; woman lifts and inspires.  The scope
+for contrast was infinite if not always exact.  It
+would quite spoil the effect to admit that there were
+scores of women who had neither the will nor the
+power to lift and inspire: scores, like herself, for whom
+love was war, as fierce and unsparing as any conflict on
+earth.  Her concern was not with awkward realities,
+but with the success of her speech; and from these
+lofty opening flourishes, she swung downward to more
+practical considerations.  She reminded them that
+the patriotic spirit in which the women of England
+had worked and endured, through these first bewildering
+and terrible months of war, must assuredly
+win for them the all-round equality, economic and
+political, out of which they had been cheated for so
+long....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There spoke the soul of Harry through the voice of
+Bel, vitiating fine service rendered by a perpetual eye
+on the ballot-box of the future.  But, for the moment,
+even the obsession of years paled before her consuming
+admiration of Bel in a new rôle.  Her address
+had been reserved as the finishing touch to a great
+occasion, the inauguration of a movement that promised
+far-reaching results.  For three quarters of an hour
+she held her audience&mdash;their eyes no less than their
+brains; and the culminating burst of applause was
+fully as much a tribute to the speaker as to the
+speech: of which fact Bel was radiantly aware.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A select company of the audience remained for tea
+and talk.  Fads and theories flourished.  Compliments
+rained.  And Bel was never happier than in
+the limelight of uncritical praise.  Between Harry's
+open adoration and the joy of achievement, she
+was swept for the time being, right away from the
+perplexities and tragic issues of her lover's return.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It needed only the unexpected appearance of Rex
+Maitland, and his discreet adulation, to complete
+her enjoyment.  But his polite enquiries about Mark
+elicited brief and evasive answers.  She had not yet
+found courage to tell any one the truth, only excepting
+Harry, whose honest sympathy for the man in no way
+affected her inevitable opinion as regards Bel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Maitland was among the still further selected few
+whom Mrs. Langton entertained at dinner: and Bel&mdash;in
+an apricot-yellow gown and her leopard-skin cloak
+was admittedly the heroine of the evening.  The whole
+affair was an experience after her own heart; marred
+only by that hovering shadow of tragedy that waited
+to engulf her when solitude and darkness left her at its
+mercy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alone at last in her bedroom, it engulfed her very
+thoroughly, blotting out her tinsel triumphs, thrusting
+her in upon herself, demanding decisions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For nearly two weeks she had deliberately evaded
+the issue.  Now the time for evasion was over.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark must already know his fate: and for the last
+few days she had been half hoping, half fearing that he
+would write, through his mother, offering to release
+her from their engagement.  Not a word had come;
+and to-morrow....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mechanically discarding her robe of triumpn, she
+slipped on a padded dressing-gown and sank into a
+comfortable chair by the fire to confront the situation.
+No comfort there; look whichever way she would, it
+was all cruel and horrible: fresh proof that the Fates
+were in league against her, as always.  In her case,
+pity for the broken or imperfect creatures of earth was
+not akin to love, but to repulsion.  It was one of the
+chief horrors of this horrible war that it would fill
+the world with hundreds of maimed and disfigured
+men; perpetual reminders of an event which all sane
+people must surely crave to forget.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And now&mdash;Mark would be one of them: Mark, her
+strong, splendid lover!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To marry him would be to live with a perpetual
+reminder of the thing she abhorred: to spend her days
+either uncompanioned or tied to his chair.  No seasons
+in Town: no social triumphs.  She could not see
+Mark submitting to an invalid existence in London.
+He would cling more obstinately than ever to
+Wynchcombe Friars.  So would the very position and
+affluence she craved be robbed of its chief attraction.
+She had enough imagination to foresee it all far too
+clearly; and the more she looked at the prospect the
+less she liked it.  The hope of gradual improvement held
+out by Dr. Norton, was too distant, too uncertain
+to mitigate the tragic actuality that lay like a stone
+upon her heart.  For the great man had told her
+plainly that if, in six months, there was no change
+of condition, the case would be hopeless.  He
+considered improvement possible; but was too cautious
+to say more, or to, prophecy how far it might
+ultimately go.  And vague possibilities were not enough
+for Bel.  Suppose she did wait six months and
+then...?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With a shiver of misery she leaned forward, covering
+her face; and tears, that came so rarely, fell from
+between her fingers.  Too well she knew that the
+compound of passion and sentiment which she called
+"love," would never stand the strain; and, genuinely
+though she sorrowed for Mark, she was many degrees
+more sorry for herself.  The root of her own tragedy
+lay in the fact that now&mdash;for the first time in her
+varied dealings with men&mdash;her heart was seriously
+involved; and its promptings did not agree with the
+promptings of her brain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hitherto it had been an underling; obedient to the
+dictates of self-interest, more becomingly designated
+common-sense.  It had played no leading part in her
+swift, dramatic conquest of Mark; in the keen pleasure,
+known only to her kind, of luring him from a girl
+lovelier and worthier than herself, and with hardly a grain
+of coquetry in her composition.  Lady Forsyth's obvious
+disapproval had been but one stimulus the more:
+and, her head having guided her into a delectable
+harbour, she had felt, at last, sufficiently secure to let
+her heart have its way&mdash;with disastrous result.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For, in her own fashion, she loved Mark now, more
+deeply and genuinely than she would have believed
+possible that day at Inveraig, when she had rejoiced
+mainly in the capture of a strong man, against his
+mother's wish and probably against his own cooler
+judgment.  Her triumph had been complete.  She
+had done more than capture him; she had held him;
+and now&mdash;no denying it&mdash;he very certainly held her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In his case, absence, and the letters that revealed
+unsuspected heights and depths in him, had served to
+strengthen that hold; while her own letters were
+having the opposite effect on him.  Nor had Mark been
+mistaken in thinking that she might rise, momentarily
+to the heroic plane.  For a few exalted days she had
+seen herself in the grand rôle; and had almost believed
+in her power to carry it through.  But Nemesis
+pursued her: the Nemesis of her own nature.  Invariably
+her high impulses had been short-lived; rootless
+things, like seeds dropped on stony ground: and this
+one had proved no exception to the rule.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hovering to-night at the cross-roads, vowed to a
+decision before she slept, Bel discovered to her cost
+that this, the one great choice of her life, was decided
+already by the hundreds of minor, careless decisions
+that had gone before.  Since she had never yet, in
+small matters, chosen the path of hardness or
+unselfishness, so she could not choose it now.  The Greeks,
+as usual, were in the right of it: character is fate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For years, unconsciously, and with keen enjoyment,
+Bel Alison had been building up her own tragedy.
+Now it turned and overwhelmed her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she did not long indulge in the futility of tears.
+Very soon her practical mind was at work again devising
+pleas that would throw a becoming light on her
+quite justifiable, if unheroic, refusal to face marriage
+with a husband who must either hamper her at every
+turn, or be a cipher in her life.  The main points in her
+eyes were to do the thing gracefully, to preserve at
+least a semblance of being in the right, and, if possible,
+to avoid witnessing the pain she could not choose
+but inflict.  For that reason, his silence troubled her.
+It implied either that he meant to do the thing personally
+or&mdash;not to do it at all.  In which case, she would
+be driven to take the initiative.  That unpleasant
+possibility swung her back to her original lament.
+It was all cruel and horrible: no escape any where from
+pain for herself or him.  She felt helpless, like a
+squirrel in a revolving cage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At least she must see him to-morrow and chance
+the result.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+"Better write and be done with it, Mavourneen,"
+was Harry's counsel next day, when Bel suggested a
+train that would allow time to "look up Mark."  "It's
+a bitter business for the poor fellow losing
+everything at a stroke; and I can't believe he's the man to
+try and hold you in spite of all.  But if he gets making
+love to you&mdash;well! there's no knowing what might
+happen.  And there's only one end to the business
+that's fair on you.  Short and sharp's the kindest way
+of it, Bel.  It'll only be worse for the both of you if
+you let things drag on.  Cruel hard enough as it is."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bel admitted the hardship&mdash;and the risk: but she
+insisted on the earlier train; and wired to Mark her
+probable time of arrival at the Home.  Marriage or
+no marriage, she wanted simply to feel his arms round
+her, his lips on hers again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At first sight of him, her heart contracted so sharply
+that she had need of Harry's warning and vehement
+conviction to fortify her own resolve.  They had
+dressed him and moved him into an arm-chair by the
+fire.  A fur rug covered his legs.  The bandage had
+given place to a velvet football cap that hid the shaven
+patch on his head.  Altogether, he looked more
+normal than she had seen him yet.  But the change
+that smote her was in his face; the look of his eyes as if
+some inner light had gone out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Those first few days of awful realisation as regards
+himself and bewildering uncertainty as regards Bel
+had told upon him visibly.  The strong outline of his
+chin and jaw seemed sharper.  When he was not talking
+or smiling the strained expression of his lips was
+pitiful to see.  And his greeting, for the moment,
+unnerved her utterly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Bel,&mdash;at last!" he cried, a queer ring in his voice,
+and held out his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She came to him swiftly and half flung herself on
+him kneeling beside his chair.  Very seldom in her life
+had she felt tongue-tied: but just then speech seemed
+the last impossibility.  And when she closed her
+eyes the feel of his rough Norfolk coat against her
+cheek carried her sharply back to days of cool,
+assured conquest at Inveraig.  If <i>only</i> she had
+known!&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Very sorely she began to wish that she had followed
+Harry's advice.  For, though head governed heart,
+she was, like most egoists, a sentimentalist at the core.
+Evenly balanced on the knife-edge between pain and
+pleasure, she leaned against her lover, expecting,
+yet half dreading the word that he, poor man, was
+doing his utmost to speak.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So far he had said nothing to any one of the facts
+wrung from Keith a few days ago.  With his mother
+there had been no need.  Neither could have borne it:
+and their understanding was complete.  The mute
+sympathy of his Nurse no longer jarred: and his few
+recent visitors had continued to maintain a tactful
+silence.  Detailed talk on the subject would hurt
+like salt on an open wound.  It would also involve
+the inevitable scene, so distressful to his shaken
+nerves; and still, at critical moments, there lurked
+the dread of making ludicrous mistakes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the main stumbling-block was Bel herself.
+Her flight to Folkestone&mdash;he did not believe in the
+importance of that meeting&mdash;had convinced him that
+retreat was simply a prelude to graceful acceptance
+of her freedom.  Yet here she was, incalculable
+as ever, making passionate love to him: her lips mutely
+attesting, "I am yours, in spite of all!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Every minute of silence, every fresh kiss, made
+things harder for Mark.  The mere glamour of her
+most strangely out-lasted his own clearer vision.  After
+four of the worst days he had ever lived through, it
+was undeniably refreshing, if only because it made no
+demands on the higher centres of his brain and soul.
+But it engendered neither true emotion nor response.
+It was a pure anodyne; and as such he frankly
+recognised it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Conversely, Bel's emotion had so genuine a ring that
+it set him wondering had he after all, misjudged her?
+Were there hidden deeps in her that this sharp test
+might reach and bring to light?  In that case it were
+hard to put her aside in the hour of his own greatest
+need for the best that woman can give; harder still
+to resist her in an appealing vein.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was mentally unstrung&mdash;and he knew it.  Not
+otherwise could her mere genius for love-making
+override his deep and real conviction that in freedom
+from her spell lay his sole chance of salvation.  That
+very conviction made resistance seem unchivalrous;
+and he felt utterly unfit for the emotional strain of a
+dramatic scene, such as she would instinctively make
+out of a noble resolve to devote herself to a crippled
+husband.  By one of life's ironic twists their positions
+appeared to be reversed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was not in him to conceive that she was merely
+indulging herself to the full because this must be the
+end; because, with the innate perversity of her kind
+she had never loved him better than now, when her
+will was set to give him up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark himself, with the deeper, ingrained perversity
+of human nature, felt a sudden distaste for this
+exuberance of sentiment, which thwarted his fixed
+intent and seemed tacitly to rebuke the secret defection
+of his heart.  He began to think the thing would
+have to be written after all.  In any case he needed
+time to readjust his mind in view of her possible
+refusal to be set free.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To-morrow&mdash;perhaps.  Any idea of speaking to-day
+was "off." ...
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She released him at last, and sat back in his mother's
+low chair; her ringed hand resting close to his arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, fire away," he said in his natural manner.
+"I want to know&mdash;all that&mdash;" a gesture filled the
+gap.  "Is the latest thing in ... vocations going to
+be a thundering success?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She smiled at the recollection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It started well anyway.  Compliments were flying."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What subject?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Harry's pet subject, of course!  Chiefly glorification
+of ourselves.  But we women <i>do</i> get the kicks
+in war time and precious few of the ha'pence!"  Though
+she spoke lightly, a shade of bitterness
+crept into her tone.  "What harm if we make
+little tinsel crowns for ourselves just to keep up our
+spirits!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, sheering away as from the edge of a precipice
+she entertained him with thumb-nail sketches of
+Mrs. Langton and her friends and with a judicious selection
+of their flying compliments to herself.  The longer
+she stayed, the harder it became to get up and leave
+him&mdash;for the last time.  She felt convinced now, that
+he would not speak; and she did not mean to see him
+again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last, somehow, she was on her feet, saying she
+must go; and when she stooped to kiss him, he
+looked searchingly into her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Badly bored&mdash;are you?&mdash;by your invalid lover?"
+he asked, probing her on impulse; but she managed to
+laugh it off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Boring people is not one of his talents!" she said
+lightly, and leaned her head against him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To-morrow?" he said in her ear.  And she,
+humanly inconsistent&mdash;could not bear that her last
+word to him should be a lie.  So, for answer, she
+kissed him lingeringly, and made haste to be gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the threshold she turned, for a last look.  But
+sudden tears blinded her; and, with a flutter of her
+hand she left him.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Arrived at the flat, she found supper ready and
+Harry impatient, more from anxiety than anything
+else.  Even now she did not feel quite secure about
+Bel.  No one ever did.  It was perhaps half the secret
+of her power.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well?" she asked abruptly.  Bel shook her head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He never said a word."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Crouching on the hearth-rug she drew off her gloves
+and held her chilled hands to the blaze.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Harry's eyes scrutinised her fire-lit face.  "Perhaps
+he doesn't mean to."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh&mdash;I don't know.  But&mdash;I <i>can't</i> go on&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course you can't.  It's horribly unfair on you.
+You must write yourself, Mavourneen.  Do it
+to-night; and get it over."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bel shivered.  "I suppose&mdash;I must.  But it seems
+so ungracious coming from me.  And ... it's not
+only him.  It's the whole thing&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her voice broke suddenly and she sank on to the
+floor, sobbing passionately, her face hidden in the
+empty arm-chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Quick as thought Harry was beside her, removing
+her hat, clinging to her, murmuring endearments; to
+all of which Bel submitted without response.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You're tired, my precious, and the strain of it all
+has upset your nerves.  It won't feel half so bad once
+you've got it over.  You shall have this room to
+yourself after supper and I'll post it the minute it's
+written.  Cheer up and eat something before it all
+gets cold.  Your poor old Harry will be ever so good
+to you&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bel raised her head suddenly and shook off the
+clinging hands.  "Oh, let me alone!  You're not a bit
+sorry really.  You only want me for yourself.  But
+I'm bound to marry&mdash;I <i>must</i> marry.  You know that.
+Yet you always try to prevent me.  If you hadn't
+made such an unholy fuss about Geoffrey, we might
+have been quite happy together now in Australia.
+He was a good fellow anyway; and I would have been
+spared&mdash;<i>all this</i>.  Now I've tasted the best and I'll
+have to swallow the second best, with my eyes open
+and my heart locked up.  It's evidently not safe, even
+to fall in love with one's affianced husband.  God
+knows I've had enough of tragedy&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With a superbly dramatic gesture she swept to her
+feet and left the discomfited Harry kneeling
+ignominiously by an empty chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But if Harry's devotion was deep, her temper was
+short.  "And sometimes I think I've had enough of
+you, Bel," she flung out, scrambling ungainly from her
+knees.  "I, that have loved you and slaved for
+you&mdash;goodness knows why.  For all your sweetness, you're
+selfish, heartless, ungrateful&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She broke off, for Bel had vanished into her room
+and locked the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In her own time, she reappeared&mdash;dignified,
+unapproachable and polite.  But before their half-cold
+meal was over, dignity had thawed; Harry's temper
+had evaporated and Bel had talked herself into the
+belief that her latest evasion was mainly prompted by
+consideration for Mark.  Since she could not rise to
+his level, it were kinder to leave him than to drag
+him down.  It was a singularly sustaining belief and
+it made her ungracious letter much easier to write.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Harry, as good as her word, took a bundle of
+pamphlets to read by the kitchen fire, leaving her
+alone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a little preliminary pacing and framing of
+sentences, Bel sat down to her task, steeled outwardly
+and composed.  Harry was right.  Once the thing
+was done, past undoing, the worst wrench would be
+over.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+"My darling Mark," she began in her firm, clear
+hand.  "I can write that truthfully, in spite of what
+I am going to say.  It's not lack of love that forces me
+to do this hateful thing.  It's lack of something much
+bigger, which you possess and I most certainly don't.
+I knew, the minute I saw your face, that they had told
+you.  It's the cruelest, bitterest blow that could
+have fallen on a man like you.  To say I'm sorry would
+be simply a travesty of what I feel about it.  And
+you'll understand now what sort of a purgatory
+<i>I've</i> been going through this last two weeks.  Let
+that be my excuse&mdash;if you admit any.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mark&mdash;I didn't properly love you at Inveraig, but
+I do now.  And yet&mdash;I <i>can't</i> marry you.  No use
+pretending.  I couldn't go through the pain and strain
+of it even for the finest man I've ever known.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I told you, when first this Inferno began, that you
+were too big for a mere Bel; that in spite of it I couldn't
+let you go.  Now, <i>because</i> of it, I must.  This war
+has shrivelled up all I ever possessed in the way of a
+soul.  But it seems to have made you stand out bigger
+than before.  I believe that even this fiendish stroke of
+Fate will only crush you for a time.  You'll override
+it.  You and your astonishing mother.  Perhaps even
+wring some good out of it.  That would simply drive
+me to the other extreme.  People ought <i>not</i> to accept
+and glorify horrors like this.  It's all wrong.  Simply
+encourages Kings and politicians to wallow in wholesale
+murder for their own ends.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But this is heresy to you; so no more.  If you hate
+reading this letter, please believe I've hated writing it.
+I thought you might speak this afternoon.  But I
+expect it was too hard for you, poor boy.  And it's
+really kinder on my part to do it this way, even though
+it <i>seems</i> to put me in an ungracious position.  If I saw
+you again, I might give way after all, in spite of myself.
+But it <i>wouldn't last</i>.  A worse tragedy for you.  At
+least I'm sparing you that.  And I'm not returning
+your ring.  I feel sure you would like me to keep it
+with your letters, as a remembrance of the one real
+phase in my rather artificial life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Will you miss me tremendously, I wonder?  But
+it's no use thinking of that now.  It's all cruel and
+horrible for both of us.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If you ever hear of me marrying, you'll know it is
+simply a business arrangement&mdash;and no doubt you'll
+be very sorry for the man.  Enough of this.  Good-bye.
+Your unworthy but not unloving Bel."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+There&mdash;it was done, even to the straight thick line
+under her signature with a loop at one end.  She
+forced herself to read it through, with a critical
+detachment, and decided that it could not well be
+improved upon.  Even the ungraceful thing, she had
+managed to do gracefully.  There was a gleam of
+comfort in that.  She felt half tempted to show it
+to Harry; but refrained.  Harry was allowed to run
+out with it, however, though her cough was
+troublesome and a fine cold rain was falling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alone again, Bel sat down by the fire and tried not
+to be aware of a chill emptiness at her heart....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a sharp pang, this parting: the sharpest she
+had yet known.  But she could and would live it
+down.  Her invincible common-sense assured her that,
+after all, there were other men in the world, moneyed
+and titled; that a woman between thirty and thirty-five
+was at the zenith of her charm.  But something else
+told her that men of Mark's quality do not grow on
+bramble bushes.  Though he could not lift her to his
+level, he had raised her standard, if only for a time.
+The sort of husband who might have done very well six
+months ago would, now, not do at all.  More and
+more she saw herself as the chief sufferer in this double
+calamity.  Mark had his own fineness to uphold him.
+He had a beautiful home, devoted friends, a mother
+who worshipped him, Mr. Macnair, Sheila&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though Bel put Sheila last, the thought of her had
+come first: and in the private corner of her heart she
+was glad that her loss could not be Sheila's gain.
+Though Mark might hesitate to set her free, she could
+not see him proposing marriage to another woman.
+It was her one crumb of consolation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the sound of the latch-key in the lock she rose
+and went hurriedly to her own room.  Harry's
+jealous devotion seemed to her suddenly a thing
+intolerable&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0308"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER VIII
+</h3>
+
+<p class="intro2">
+  "There never was to God such worship sent<br>
+  By any angel in the heavenly ways<br>
+  As this, that Life has uttered for God's praise:&mdash;<br>
+  This girlhood&mdash;as the service of Life said<br>
+  In the beauty and the manners of this maid."<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;L. ABERCROMBIE.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+But Mark Forsyth had still a long black road to
+travel before he could arrive at mastering calamity, or
+even at recognising the very real ameliorations which
+Bel had enumerated for her own justification.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During those first staggering days, realisation bit
+into him like a corrosive acid, that he had lost, at a
+stroke, all the manlier side of life; all free, independent
+movement, and the right to hold his promised wife,
+even if she willed.  More and more he doubted this
+last, in spite of recent proof that her love had been
+growing deeper precisely as his own had begun to
+wane.  That was during her absence at Folkestone,
+which, in the circumstances, looked like a prelude to
+rejection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And all the while, locked in the depths of his being,
+lay the hidden knowledge that he had jettisoned the
+real woman for the sake of the tinsel sham and had
+discovered the truth too late.  He knew now why his
+feeling for Sheila had been so curiously unaffected
+by his passing passion for Bel.  It belonged to the
+depths; and there it had lain hidden, like a jewel in a
+mine.  Once he was blind.  Now he saw.  War and
+its vicissitudes had effectually burnt away the husks
+and left the real man&mdash;battered, enlightened, enlarged....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His sole ray of light, since the blow fell, had been one
+of Sheila's rare letters, written directly she heard that
+he knew the truth.  Short and simple as it was, Mark
+found in every line of it the inexpressible fragrance of
+her spirit, the sure delicate touch of the healer on his
+hidden wound.  It had given him a passing uplift,
+a glimpse of what life might be when the fog had
+cleared.  At present, it seemed to be choking the life
+out of him, converting all his strength to weakness, his
+blood to gall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila wrote that she was still very much tied with
+work at Westover.  Mr. Nacnair had been angelic
+about coming down and giving her first-hand news; but
+the moment it was possible, she would fly up to
+London for a glimpse of them both.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And on the morning after Bel's return&mdash;just as
+Mark was beginning to wonder at her non-appearance&mdash;the
+door opened to admit Lady Forsyth and Sheila,
+in squirrel furs, with a bunch of violets in her coat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sheila!" he exclaimed, startled, yet frankly
+overjoyed.  "Lord&mdash;it's like&mdash;seeing you suddenly&mdash;like a
+breath of Hampshire in this confounded London.  I'd
+pretty well given you up."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I've been trying to come for nearly a week.&mdash;True."  She
+nodded, beaming on him and unfastening
+her violets while she talked.  "It seemed hopeless.
+Then suddenly, to-day, I saw a free space ahead.
+There was no time to cry, 'Look out!'  So I just
+flew off and nipped into a kind train.  And these"&mdash;she
+held out her violets&mdash;"are for you.  I wanted to
+bring a sheaf of Father's special chrysanthemums.
+But I'd have lost the train."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I prefer these," he said, and under pretence of
+sniffing them he touched them with his lips.  "Fasten
+them&mdash;will you?  I'm no better than an overgrown
+infant."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She shook her head at the faint note of bitterness.
+"A very capable infant!  And your precious right
+hand's ever so much better.  There!  They look
+lovely."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For answer, he merely glanced from the flowers to
+her face.  Lady Forsyth, standing near the window?
+watched the little scene with a yearning ache at her
+heart.  Now she came forward and patted Mark's
+shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You shall have her to yourself," she said, "for a
+real long talk.  I'll do dragon downstairs and keep
+Londoners at bay!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's good."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark's tone was gravely content.  Reaching out,
+he drew a low chair nearer to the fire and to himself.
+"Sit&mdash;Mouse," he said, as his mother moved away.
+"Take off your coat.  Look as if&mdash;you'd come to stay."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She obeyed, more gladly than he knew, and, sitting
+down by him, drew a khaki sock out of her bag.  "You
+must excuse," she said smiling.  "We're as bad as the
+French Revolution, these days!  I'm more or less
+responsible for Ralph's men.  They feel the cold
+cruelly, poor dears!  And I don't get overmuch time
+now.  Mums looks rather strained and tired, doesn't
+she?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark nodded.  "It's been cruel hard on her&mdash;this
+business.  But she's come through it all ... 'm
+what's the confounded word?&mdash;a heroine.  Has she
+said much to you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not much.  She knows I understand.  We came
+very close together ... before."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark leaned forward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You know, you promised you'd tell me ... all
+that.  And then&mdash;you never came!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dear, I couldn't," she said very low to the heel
+of her sock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He watched her a while in silence; approving the
+clear, delicate outline of her profile, the soft-toned blue
+of her blouse, and the old lace collar he had given her
+two years ago.  He knew now how impermissibly
+he had been craving to see her....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, as you <i>have</i> turned up, at last,"  he said,
+abruptly breaking the silence, "tell ... all about it
+now.  I'm dead sick of myself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she told...
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For nearly an hour they were left in peace.  Not
+since that long-ago talk on the terrace, when she had
+surprised him by denouncing Bel, had they talked so
+intimately or at such length; and for Mark it was the
+most satisfying hour he had known since his return.
+Both of them, unsuspected by each other, clung
+rather desperately to "Mums" as the one topic on
+which they could safely draw near together.  Then
+Sheila wanted to hear about Sœur Colette.  This
+was not easy matter for Mark, but he achieved it,
+after a fashion.  He was describing his own abortive
+attempt to thank the devoted little nun at parting,
+when there came a knock at the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was the maid with two letters for Mark.  With a
+start&mdash;half relief, half vexation&mdash;he recognised Bel's
+writing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"May I?" he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Sheila, rising casually, went over to the window
+that looked across the Park.  This quiet hour
+together had been so rare and perfect a gift from the
+blue that she could hardly endure to watch him read
+a love-letter from Bel.  That the girl could dream of
+leaving him in his helplessness never so much as
+entered her head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A smothered curse startled her and she turned sharply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mark!" she cried, an irrepressible ring of tenderness
+in her tone; but he scarcely heard her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Mark of five minutes earlier&mdash;her Mark&mdash;had
+vanished.  The man she confronted was of Bel's
+making.  He had tossed his letter on to his elbow-table.
+He sat looking straight before him, his face
+set and stern.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh&mdash;<i>what</i> is it?" she asked, rooted to the spot by a
+feeling that she ought not to be there.  No one ought
+to see him suffering so.  But Mark, dashed from his
+haven of content by a great wave of anger and disgust,
+was past troubling about any human presence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She ... has no further use for me.&mdash;That's all,"
+he said, as if he were speaking into vacancy.  "And
+yesterday I was fool eno' ... Quite a ... masterly
+composition!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Could Bel have heard that last she would have felt
+punished indeed.  But it was Sheila who heard
+it&mdash;Sheila who stood grasping the window-sill, swept by a
+tempest of anger scarcely less than his own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh&mdash;she's a coward&mdash;a coward!"  The words
+flashed out involuntarily; and he seemed suddenly to
+be aware of her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You tender-hearted Mouse," he said, in a changed
+voice.  "You ... don't understand, eh?  But ... it's
+natural enough.  Inevitable.  No one ... but
+Mums could be expected ... to have any use for me&mdash;now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To that tragic remark Sheila could find no answer.
+Besides, she was fighting back her tears and wondering
+desperately, ought she perhaps, to speak of what she
+knew?  Would it give him the smallest consolation?
+Was it fair to kick even Bel when she was down&mdash;Bel,
+who had taken her all?  Fair, or not, the thing was not
+in Sheila's nature.  She was human enough to wish
+that Mark could know&mdash;now.  But she was not the one
+to tell him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thank God&mdash;for Mums," she said softly, after a
+long pause; and he bowed his head in heartfelt
+acquiescence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The strained hardness had gone from his face.  But
+the irony of the whole situation was piercing his heart.
+Sheila&mdash;who would have been staunch through thick
+and thin&mdash;here alone with him, almost within arm's
+length, yet irrevocably, eternally out of reach; lost to
+him through his own blind folly.  If ever mortal man
+endured the torment of Tantalus it was Mark Forsyth
+in that hour of bewildered anger and pain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila, believing him heart-broken, remained near
+the window, seeking some inadequate word of comfort,
+and finding none.  Instinct told her that, for the
+moment, silence was best.  Probably he was not even
+aware of her: while she, startled out of her stoic
+self-repression, had never been so intimately, so poignantly
+aware of him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Unconsciously he had clenched his left hand until
+the knuckles stood out sharp and white.  He sat
+staring into the fire with a fixed unseeing look.  At
+intervals his eyebrows twitched nervously; and sudden
+fear seized her lest this blow had fallen on him
+before he was fit for the strain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mark," she said at last, very gently, and came
+closer to him now.  "It simply ... bewilders me;
+and it has come at such a cruel moment.  But you
+mustn't let&mdash;things upset you too much.  Would
+you rather be alone?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To her surprise he flung out his hand and grasped
+her wrist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No&mdash;no.  Don't <i>you</i> leave me!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Was it fancy,&mdash;or was there an under-note of fear
+in his tone?  The mere possibility pierced her heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sit down&mdash;please," he said abruptly, and released
+her.  "You've come all this way and I've been
+simply&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He checked himself, and was thankful that she would
+suppose he had forgotten a word.  "I've been&mdash;looking
+forward to it for so long.  I'll be rotten company.
+But do stay...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He let out a great sigh and she sat by him as before;
+but the spell of their happy intercourse was broken.
+Bel had come upon the scene, and, as usual, had spoilt
+everything.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I think," she said, "you ought to lie back and rest
+a little.  Would you prefer ... shall I read?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do.  I'd love it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What have you got here? ... Roman Rolland?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes: a new one&mdash;the '<i>Michel Ange</i>.'  It's splendid."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He indicated the page; but first she must arrange his
+chair and cushions at a restful slope.  Leaning back
+he gazed up at her.  For a mere instant his eyes lingered
+in hers, that had the clear depth and quiet of a
+mountain lake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Clever Mouse!" he said, in a voice of lazy content.
+"And look here, not a word to Mums.  She'd rage.
+We'll have our afternoon in peace; and I'll tell her
+to-night.  Go ahead."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pocketing Bel's letter, he closed his eyes; and Sheila,
+between the sentences, could scrutinise his face.
+Cheek-bones and jaw and the fine strong curve of the
+eye-bone still stood out too sharply; and she noted
+with a pang the strained corners of his mouth.
+Beneath his surface composure she detected unmistakable
+signs of jarred nerves&mdash;signs she was learning
+to know too well&mdash;and a great longing came over her
+to soothe him with the touch of her skilled fingers over
+his forehead and head.  But the very intensity of
+her feeling made her shrink from an offer that would
+otherwise have been a mere matter of course.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meantime she must give her attention to Michael
+Angelo&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And it was so that Lady Forsyth found them when
+she came to carry Sheila off for lunch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After his prescribed rest, they returned and had their
+afternoon in peace.  Though Mark's natural cheerfulness
+was still shadowed by his calamity, Sheila&mdash;seeing
+what she had seen&mdash;marvelled at the controlled ease
+of his manner.  And few could estimate better the
+manifold difficulties of self-control.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The moment of parting put an almost equal strain
+on both.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come again soon, Mouse," he said, with a brave
+show of lightness that wrung her heart.  "It's done
+me good&mdash;a breath of country air."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She promised to come, when stress of work allowed,
+and she frankly returned the pressure of his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then&mdash;she was gone: and for Mark it was as if the
+sun had fallen out of the sky.  Alone&mdash;with the
+haunting sense of her presence, the empty chair, and that
+letter in his pocket, a chill conviction crept through
+him that life&mdash;real life&mdash;was over and done with&mdash;that
+he had reached the dead end of everything.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+His mother, when she reappeared, found him lying
+listless and unoccupied, staring into space.  As she
+came to the fire and drew off her gloves, he glanced up
+at her without a word of greeting: a glance that would
+normally have hurt her.  But, in those days, thought
+and feeling were altogether concentrated on him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Darling," she said, in a voice that tried not to
+sound over-anxious, "you look horribly done up.  It
+was lovely, wasn't it?  But I'm afraid it's all been
+a little too much for you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His answer, spoken in a vehement undertone, jarred
+all through her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You're right.  The whole cursed situation is just
+a little too much for me."  Then, seeing the startled
+pain in her eyes, he handed her Bel's envelope, adding
+more gently: "I'm not going off my head.  That
+came this morning."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She read it slowly, with very mixed feelings, and
+Mark's eyes never left her face.  The breeze of her
+thoughts rippled over it like wind over a pool.  But
+she did not "rage" as he had anticipated.  She
+was at once too thankful and too profoundly angered
+by the girl's invincible coolness and selfishness to find
+relief in mere explosives.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well?" he asked, seeing that she had reached the end.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Well!</i>" she echoed, with eloquent brevity.  Then,
+after a pause: "No wonder that took the virtue out of
+Sheila's visit.  It's Bel through and through.  I can
+make no severer comment.  And, after all, one detects
+a touch of poetic justice.  She did it ... before
+to hurt you deliberately for her own ends.  Now she's
+compelled to do it, being what she is.  Of course&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mother, be <i>quiet</i>!"  Mark's eyebrows twitched
+and he raised a commanding hand.  "She's in the
+right of it.  But yesterday ... she never gave me
+a chance....  Not likely I should dream of holding
+her to...  Oh Lord!"  He clenched his hand and
+closed his eyes, as if to shut out the intolerable truth.
+But the enemy was within.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And his mother stood there watching him.  Every
+nerve in her quivered with his pain as well as her own;
+and two great tears rolled unheeded down her cheeks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly Mark opened his eyes; and at sight of her
+mute controlled misery, his heart smote him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Mother</i> ... I'm a graceless beast," he said
+slowly.  "Thank God&mdash;there's <i>you</i>&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes&mdash;there's me&mdash;always!"  With a sharp sob
+she fell on her knees beside him and pressed her lips
+upon his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0309"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER IX
+</h3>
+
+<p class="intro">
+"Suffer not woman in her tenderness to sit near him in the
+darkness.  Banish the frailties of hope, wither the relenting of
+love, scorch the fountain of tears...."&mdash;DE QUINCEY.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Next morning they could speak of it all more calmly.
+Mark had slept little and had done some unpleasantly
+lucid thinking in the small hours.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now&mdash;it must be business to-day," he said, when
+his mother appeared after breakfast, to read or to write
+for him according to his mood.  "And first, we must
+answer <i>this</i>."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He brought his hand down sharply on Bel's letter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Need you?" she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes&mdash;I need.  I've ... one or two things to say.
+My left-hand scrawl's not legible yet; so&mdash;you must
+write them for me.  She won't like that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was the first time Helen Forsyth had heard a
+vindictive note in her son's voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," she said quietly; and, opening his despatch-case,
+she laid out her materials, while he sat worrying
+his moustache.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When she was ready, he dictated in a low,
+impersonal tone the "one or two things" that he had
+thought out in the small hours.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Bel, I have your letter.  Of course you are free.  I
+had no other intention.  I meant to tell you on Thursday,
+but ... I was a weak fool&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mark!" his mother remonstrated; and he frowned
+sharply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I was a weak fool," he repeated with emphasis.
+"Written it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"As it's hard on you losing everything, I am
+instructing my solicitors to pay you the £5000 I told
+you about.  Money is always useful."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At that, his mother laid down her pen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My dear boy, it's out of the question.  Walker
+will think you've gone mad."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Walker may think what he pleases.  He will get his
+instructions before he knows the engagement is off."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The set of Mark's face warned her that she was
+knocking her head against a wall; but she could not
+give in without further protest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Darling, do be reasonable," she pleaded.  "It's
+not fair&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not fair&mdash;on whom?" he blazed round at her.
+"I'm not despoiling Wynchcombe Friars.  And it
+isn't as if ... there was any chance&mdash;Marriage is
+out of the question.  And ... it's a bit hard on Bel.
+After all, she's lost her husband through the war.
+I'm simply treating her as if she was my widow.  And
+it may save some other luckless chap from ... the
+'business arrangement' she proposes to ratify at the
+altar.  Anyway, Mother, the money's mine, and I
+don't feel fit to argue the point.  If you won't write
+what I want, I must do it through Keith&mdash;that's all."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She bit her lip to keep back the futile retort.  He
+was plainly not himself this morning.  Dr. Norton
+had warned her of possible nerve complications.
+Opposition was useless; probably harmful.  And
+what did a little money matter after all?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course I'll write what you want, Mark," she
+said quietly. "But ... wouldn't three thousand
+be enough?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, all right, three thousand," he agreed listlessly,
+to her complete surprise.  All the fire seemed to have
+gone out of him.  "Let's get it over.  Have you
+written everything?  Thanks.  Give it here."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He read it through, while his mother watched him
+with troubled eyes, then slowly, laboriously he
+scrawled with his left hand: "Good-bye.  Mark
+Stuart Forsyth."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There&mdash;that's done," he said, pushing the paper
+across the table.  "Write instructions to Walker in
+my name, will you?  I feel fagged out.  This cursed
+lying up saps all one's energy."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though her heart yearned over him, she answered
+nothing.  He needed no cheap word of sympathy
+from her.  They were one in suffering; and he knew it.
+All she could do for him was to be untiring in his
+service.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While she went on with her writing, he lay silent
+and inert, not even troubling to fill his pipe&mdash;an
+achievement that had delighted him a few days ago.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mechanically Helen's pen travelled over the paper;
+but she scarcely knew what she wrote, so harassed was
+her brain with perplexity and foreboding.  She had
+hoped much from Sheila's visit, but Bel had stepped in
+and spoilt the effect.  Just when the first realisation
+of his fate was blackening everything, she must needs
+rub salt into his wound by dwelling on the pain and
+strain which she could not endure.  And Mark
+responded by heaping coals of fire on her head.  It
+was maddening of him; but at the moment every
+minor consideration was dwarfed by the discouraging
+state of his nerves.  His alterations between listlessness
+and irritability alarmed her.  Mercifully, Dr. Norton
+was coming to-morrow; and she hoped Keith
+would arrive soon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the first, far-off sound of his footstep she laid
+down her pen.  "I'll be back in a minute, darling," she
+said, and hurried away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the midst of all her anxiety and sorrow, it was a
+very real blessing to have Keith back again; and, as
+regards Mark, her reliance on him was absolute.  To
+her, their relation seemed a singularly perfect thing.
+She had almost forgotten&mdash;in her concentration on
+Mark&mdash;that he was supposed to be in love with her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What's wrong now?" he asked: she was so
+obviously thankful to see him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, everything.  Come in here a minute."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She led him into the empty ante-room where
+visitors waited; and there told him, in a few trenchant
+phrases, the tale of Bel's defection, of Sheila's visit,
+and of Mark's change for the worse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I suspect he didn't sleep much last night, and I'm
+afraid I ... rather ... get on his nerves," she
+concluded, with a pitiful quiver of her lip.
+"Something fresh is hurting him terribly&mdash;something
+bigger, I think, than the loss of Bel.  Keith ... I'm
+afraid ... for his precious brain."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't get thinking that, Helen."  Keith's eyes
+were gentler than his tone.  "How about another
+drive?  The first was a success.  We'll ask Nurse."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, do."  Her face cleared.  "But I think&mdash;unless
+he asks for me&mdash;I won't come.  He can feel
+my anxiety&mdash;just as I feel his pain.  And it worries
+him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well&mdash;perhaps you're right.  You mothers are the
+standing miracles of creation."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She shook her head; but his quietly spoken tribute
+cheered and comforted her, as he had meant that it
+should.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nurse" approved the suggestion of a drive, and
+Mark assented without enthusiasm.  He also accepted
+without comment the fact that his mother was not
+coming; and she, from the window, watched them go
+in a mood of bewildered misery that came very
+near despair.  Could she have broken down the wall
+of Mark's reserve and probed the depths of his hidden
+pain, even her fine courage might altogether have
+given way.  But mercifully man "goes upon his long
+business like a blind child...."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+To-day's drive was quite conspicuously not a
+success.  The first one had come at a happy moment.
+But Mark was slipping steadily down into the dark
+places of the soul where happy moments are not,
+where he would have to fight with beasts&mdash;quite as real
+and terrible as the beasts at Ephesus&mdash;before he could
+win again to daylight and sanity and acceptance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To-day, though the sun shone fitfully and the sky
+showed frail patches of blue, his soul was unresponsive,
+utterly, to the still small voice of hope.  To-day the
+mere sight of whole men and women, walking, riding
+free to come and go, to feel the good earth under their
+feet, stirred him suddenly to such a fury of rebellion
+that he felt as if his brain would burst.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bombs!  That was what he wanted.  Bombs to
+hurl right and left into that complacent crowd, that
+talked "war" and "atrocities" and "the Christmas
+truce," and knew nothing about it all&mdash;nothing
+whatever.  Why were there no bombs?  It was
+scandalous mismanagement&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By some queer freak, the taxi had become a trench
+and the complacent Londoners were Germans&mdash;swarms
+of them.  One couldn't imagine Germans otherwise
+than in swarms.  And there was only one way to
+prevent these swarms from overrunning the earth:&mdash;shells
+and guns, unlimited shells and guns.  When the
+deuce would Home Authorities even begin to wake up...?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this point the Germans vanished; the trench
+was a taxi again, and Mark glanced furtively at Keith
+as if to see whether he had noticed the transformation.
+But Keith had merely seen the outer Mark sunk in an
+unnatural apathy that seemed to confirm his own
+worst forebodings; and now, in response to that
+questioning glance, he smiled his tranquil, rather tired
+smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A nice change getting out into the open, eh, old
+man?" he said.  "In a few months' time you may be
+handling your own car."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Think so?"  A flicker of interest sounded in
+Mark's tone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Quite possible, I should say.  When that day
+comes we'll go round recruiting again&mdash;you and I."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, having caught Mark's attention, he dilated
+a little upon that vexed question, and ventured a pious
+hope that some day, something&mdash;perhaps Zeppelin
+bombs in Downing Street&mdash;would convince a Government,
+presumably anxious for victory, that, in war,
+time spelt not merely money but infinitely precious
+human lives.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark gave the matter his polite consideration,
+though it seemed to him curiously remote.  Keith was
+doing his best.  They all were; but none of them had
+a glimmering idea of the Sheila complication, or of
+what the whole thing meant&mdash;for him.  Just as well,
+perhaps.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He felt half ashamed, now, of the sudden rage that
+had possessed him; and that brief vivid delusion had
+startled him not a little.  He must "hang on to
+things" firmly or it might recur.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He hung on, accordingly, till the drive ended and
+they carried him up to his room, haunted now by
+Sheila's presence.  His mother was out; and Keith, as
+luck would have it, began to talk of Sheila and to sing
+her praises, till Mark could endure it no more.  His
+brows twitched and he hung on to things with desperate
+tenacity.  But it was useless.  Keith, in the
+kindness of his heart, was jabbing nails into him:
+driving them home&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a time Mark bore it in semi-silence: then, to
+Keith's consternation, he suddenly and very
+completely let himself go....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For close on half an hour he cursed everything and
+everyone, more especially the devoted Macgregor,
+whose superfluous zeal had saved him from extinction.
+He raged against his dependence on others, against
+the broken life ahead of him, with a terrible fluency
+and command of language that Keith had not heard
+from him since full power of speech returned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To interrupt or reason with him were worse than
+useless: moreover, Macnair knew that, for a man of
+Mark's passionate nature, some such explosion was
+inevitable, and he devoutly hoped it might bring relief.
+Much of it, both in manner and matter, was so foreign
+to the true Mark, that Keith found it all unendurably
+painful.  Yet he endured; and at intervals said what
+he could, which was little enough; first, because he
+was a tongue-tied Scot; second, because Mark was in
+no condition just then for comfort of any kind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Slowly the storm died down to disconnected mutterings
+of apology and self-disgust; and the sound of his
+mother's footstep without silenced him altogether.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh Lord!  Here's Mums," he murmured, and
+Keith did not fail to notice the worried look in his eyes.
+"Don't go, old man.  And for God's sake&mdash;don't
+give me away."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Is</i> it likely?" Keith asked, with a reproachful look.
+"She has more than enough to bear."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Words and tone had their intended effect.  When
+his mother appeared, Mark achieved a smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She came to him and kissed his forehead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Had a nice drive?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, a damned delectable drive!" he answered with
+a short laugh.  "Beastly unfair on Keith, dosing
+him with an hour of my society."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You shut up," Keith commanded sternly; and
+Helen, seeing that something had gone wrong, made
+haste to change the subject.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Keith took her out to lunch and had a good deal to
+say about the political situation.  Then, the day being
+Saturday, he insisted on a Symphony Concert.  He
+further insisted on ringing up Sir John Forsyth&mdash;who
+happened to be in town&mdash;and asking him to look in on
+Mark for tea.  Helen never liked him better than in
+these occasional autocratic moods.  Too often
+nowadays the one thing she prayed to be delivered from
+was a decision, no matter how trifling; and at such
+times the masculine note of command was restful
+beyond belief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So she went with him to the Queen's Hall; and
+Beethoven's music flowed like a river of healing over
+the bruised places of her heart; and when they
+returned to Park Lane, Sir John began insisting also.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This, though she never guessed it, was equally
+Keith's doing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Laura, he said, had given him strict injunctions to
+bring Helen back for dinner.  "Quite quiet," the
+Admiral assured her, seeing hesitation on her face.
+"Only ourselves and the Desmonds.  He's up on
+some recruiting business.  Age cannot wither him.
+Wonderful fellow!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But&mdash;Mark," Helen murmured, glancing at her
+son, who seemed lost in his own reflections.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll spend the evening with him," Keith struck in.
+"Nothing I should enjoy better."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark, who was listening fitfully, greeted that
+statement with a grimace and a faint, very faint,
+twinkle in his eye.  The eclipse of his humour was,
+to those who loved him, a bitter thing; and, in Keith's
+opinion, a bad sign.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was certainly not in evidence that evening.  The
+afternoon's explosion seemed to have flung him to the
+other extreme.  He smoked pipe after pipe without
+volunteering a word; and Keith, watching him
+unobserved, grew more anxious than ever.  Towards the
+end, after a long silence, he suddenly leaned forward
+and gave Keith a straight look.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I've got it!" he said, with decision.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Got what, old chap?" Keith asked, feeling
+seriously alarmed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A priceless sentence of Robert Louis'&mdash;rather apt
+for the occasion," Mark answered; and Keith broke
+into a low laugh of relief.  "It's been wandering in
+my head, bits of it.  Couldn't piece them together.
+Now it's come straight.  'When we have fallen
+through storey after storey of our vanity and
+aspiration, and sit rueful among the ruins, it is then
+that we begin to measure the stature of our
+friends.'  Struck me I'd been ... measuring yours to-day.
+Understand?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I do understand."  Keith was too deeply moved
+to say more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not quite so crazy, am I, as I sounded this afternoon,"
+Mark went on, with a pathetic pride in his own
+achievement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not a bit of it!  If you can quote R.L.S. verbatim,
+you'll do all right, in time."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes&mdash;in time."  Mark let out his breath and
+leaned back against his cushions.  "Meanwhile
+I&mdash;'sit rueful among the ruins.'  And you must
+make allowances, you ... people."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At that, Keith rose abruptly; it was time to be gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My dear fellow," he said, and laid a hand on
+Mark's shoulder, "we're ready to make all the
+allowances on earth.  Only&mdash;" a pause&mdash;"as far as you
+can ... be merciful to your mother."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark sighed.  "Mums?  Yes&mdash;that's the difficulty.
+Women are the deuce."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A few of them," Keith remarked with quiet
+emphasis, "are about all the visible guarantee we
+have that&mdash;there's a God in heaven!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he took his leave, feeling a shade less anxious,
+but determined to be on the spot next morning and to
+see Dr. Norton when he came.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+"Sleep sound, old chap," was his parting injunction;
+but the brief snatches of sleep that came to Mark in
+the early hours of the night were robbed of all healing
+influence by dreams&mdash;hideous dreams, such as he had
+not suffered from since his earlier days in the Red Cross
+barn.  Vividly he saw again that mound of earth, in
+the moonlight, and the leg that would not be still;
+and again, in imagination, he crept out into the open,
+caring nothing for risks if only he could quiet that leg
+or release its owner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Up to this point, the dream was always the same.
+It varied only in its culmination.  And to-night
+there sprang from behind the mound a colossal German
+with nails like talons and eyes like live coals.
+But when Mark would have sprung at him he found
+himself paralysed; while the Thing under the mound
+whimpered for help, and the Creature&mdash;a very
+Apollyon&mdash;loomed nearer every moment....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miraculously, he shook off that nightmare rigidity.
+He was locked in a suffocating death-grapple.  The
+Creature's breath scorched his face; and, with a start,
+he awoke, shivering, beads of cold sweat upon his
+forehead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My God!" he breathed, between horror and relief,
+and promptly switched on the light.  It was just
+after one o'clock; but sleep and the desire of sleep
+were gone from him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To quiet his mind and cleanse it of fear he tried
+reading a few pages of <i>Michel Ange</i>.  It was useless.
+His eyes followed the words but, although he
+understood them, they made no connected impression on
+his brain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With a sigh he gave it up, switched off the light
+and lay there, open-eyed, hour after hour, watching
+two panels of moonlight shift slowly across the carpet,
+climb the wall, lessen and vanish as the moon swung
+westward.  Outside, the companionable hum of
+traffic grew fainter; ceased altogether; and left him at
+the mercy of his increasingly bitter thoughts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Too clearly he foresaw the peculiar trials of his
+hampered, restricted life; devoid of freedom, devoid
+of movement, save such as he could accomplish in a
+wheeled chair, or a motor&mdash;perhaps.  To a man of
+independent spirit and immense physical vigour, the
+prospect was intolerable; and the glimmer of hope
+on the horizon was too dim to pierce the fog that
+shrouded his spirit.  Better a shattered limb, that
+could have been replaced, than this hulk of useless
+bone and sinew.  Even now he could not grasp the
+fact that in all probability, he would never stand
+squarely on his feet again&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And that was only a part of the tragedy: the rest
+was entirely of his own making, which did not mend
+matters&mdash;rather the reverse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the silence, one reiterate sentence kept hammering
+at his brain: "All along, I have been a fool&mdash;worse
+than a fool.  All along, Mums has been right."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Forcing himself to travel backward through the
+years, he saw, now, how obviously it had been Sheila
+from the very beginning; so obviously, that he had
+taken things almost too much for granted.  She and
+Mums were his life.  He had asked nothing better;
+and having them constantly with him, he had scarcely
+given a thought to marriage.  On the whole, he had
+preferred his freedom.  Marriage could wait.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was her sudden departure from his horizon and
+her charming letters&mdash;she was fairly communicative
+on paper&mdash;that had set him thinking seriously of her,
+dreaming of her, longing to see her again.  That year
+of her absence had seemed a rather blank year.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then&mdash;she had come back....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He remembered very well that moment of meeting;
+the stir in his veins; the new touch of shyness between
+them, and the light in his mother's eyes.  He understood
+it all now.  She had been watching her dearest
+dream come true.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Soon after that he had found himself wondering&mdash;did
+Sheila, by any chance, care?  Or was it chiefly
+Mums?  And was he no more to her than Ralph?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At that point&mdash;with a suddenness, a swiftness of
+which he now felt half ashamed&mdash;Bel happened to
+him.  There is no other word for it.  She came,
+smiled, conquered; and for a time he was translated;
+no longer master of his destiny and very hardly master
+of himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Living again through those plays, he began to suspect
+that from the first her effect on him had been
+conscious, deliberate.  There was no true simplicity in
+her.  Yet with what engaging charm she could affect
+simplicity, the better to secure her hold on him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Since his return, since he had been able to see her as
+she was, he had perceived that she represented, in subtle
+gracious guise, an appeal which, in its more obvious
+forms, he had successfully withstood.  For this, for
+the glamour, the unsatisfying charm of the mere
+courtesan&mdash;so he labelled her in his bitterness&mdash;he had
+flung aside a real woman; one of the few, as Keith
+had said, who are a visible guarantee of God.  He had
+dropped the substance to catch at a shadow: and
+now, too late, the horrors and splendours of war, the
+shining faith and saintliness of one small French nun,
+had renewed a right spirit within him and opened
+his eyes to the truth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was the cruelest knowledge of his life.  Even
+the crippling of his manhood seemed a small thing
+beside that other loss for which he alone was to blame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strange how vivid was the feel of her in absence!
+How near she had drawn to him in France!  And
+Bel, not seen, eluded him utterly.  Proof&mdash;he knew
+it now&mdash;that she was but the fair semblance of reality;
+while Sheila, like the King's daughter, was "all
+glorious within."  Six months ago, she might have been
+his for the asking.  And she would have stood by him,
+stood by him to the end&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Towards morning, he slept heavily for an hour;
+and woke with a dead weight on heart and brain: a
+weight, beyond his power to shift, that seemed steadily
+pressing him down, down into the depths&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In this state Dr. Norton found him; and, after some
+fifteen minutes of very lop-sided talk, he said
+decisively: "Sir Mark, I've come to the conclusion we
+can't keep you here your full time.  The sooner we
+get you out of Town the better."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Home?" Mark asked, a glimmer of hope in his voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm afraid&mdash;not yet.  But a move in that direction.
+'Mavins,' in Surrey; a beautiful old place.  Perhaps
+you know it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sir Howard Meredith has given it over to convalescents
+like yourself, who need mental as well as physical
+healing.  I'll ring them up.  Move you to-day, if
+possible.  You'll go quite comfortably by motor
+ambulance."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thanks."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The veil of indifference had fallen again.  "Anything's
+preferable&mdash;to this."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Cheer up, then, and give yourself a chance,"
+Norton commanded briskly; but he walked down
+the passage with an anxious line between his brows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He found Macnair and Lady Forsyth in the sitting-room,
+and wasted no words in vain preliminaries.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My patient's all to pieces," he announced bluntly.
+"Nerves in a rotten state.  What have you been
+doing to him these two days?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helen briefly explained the situation and Bel's
+latest move.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the doctor listened, anxiety gave place to anger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good Lord!  As if he hadn't enough against him!
+I've distrusted that young lady and her silky manners
+from the start.  Seen too many of her kind, in hospitals,
+smoking cigarettes with wounded officers, under
+the impression that they are doing their 'bit' for their
+country.  He's well rid of her; but this is a critical
+moment for any fresh upset."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He proceeded to unfold his plan; and to them he
+explained more fully that "Mavins" was more a home
+for nerve-shattered officers.  There Sir Mark would
+be in the best possible hands; noted specialists,
+professors of psychology; and there was no reason to
+suppose that he might not pull round completely, in
+time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We'll move him to-day if we can," Norton
+concluded, addressing Lady Forsyth.  "His best chance
+just now is to get right away from everything and
+everyone associated with this business;
+especially&mdash;from you!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She managed to smile.  "Oh, I know, I'm the
+fatal one&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because he cares for you most," Norton reminded
+her in a gentler tone.  Then he went off to make the
+necessary arrangements.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a good deal of telephoning, matters were
+settled.  Mark would leave in the early afternoon.
+Dr. Norton, meanwhile, had discovered that Macnair
+was a personal friend of Professor Langton, the great
+psychologist.  On the strength of this he proposed
+that Keith should go down with Mark and stay a few
+days till he felt settled in his new surroundings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark, himself, took no visible interest in it
+all.  He seemed to have slipped hopelessly out of
+reach.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After lunch his mother came in for a few minutes
+to say good-bye; and there on his table lay an open
+note in Bel's handwriting.  For a moment it startled
+her: then she remembered his quixotic gift.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"May I?" she asked, and he nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bel's acknowledgment was brief and, as usual,
+effective.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+"Coals of fire on my head.  How exactly like you!
+And&mdash;what can one say, except that my utter
+unworthiness is the measure of my gratitude.&mdash;BEL."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+"Posing to the last!" was Lady Forsyth's enraged
+reflection.  "That's the best place for it," she said
+aloud; and tearing it across, she flung it in the fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark, leaning back against his cushions watched
+it burn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helen was watching his face.  It showed no glimmer
+of feeling.  Then, anxiety and curiosity so pricked
+her that she ventured a question.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Darling," she said, a hand on his shoulder, "I'm
+puzzled.  Is this fresh trouble&mdash;altogether Bel?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"N&mdash;no.  Not the way you mean.  Still&mdash;she's
+responsible&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His brows twitched.  He seemed to force the words
+out, frowning at the fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, unexpectedly, he looked up at her, a strange,
+wild light in his eyes.  "Mums, it's&mdash;oh God! ... It's
+<i>everything</i>!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To that heart-piercing cry there could be only one
+answer.  Stooping over him, she kissed him, holding
+him close; and he, with sudden fervour, returned her
+kiss, clutching her hand as if he could not bear to let it
+go.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So they parted, with never a word; and her
+question remained unanswered;&mdash;the puzzle still
+unsolved.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Keith went with him, as arranged.  Sheila was
+presumably chained to Westover; and Helen, with
+heart and hope near breaking-point, was left utterly
+alone.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0401"></a></p>
+
+<h2>
+BOOK IV
+<br>
+VIA LUCIS
+</h2>
+
+<p><br><br></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER I
+</h3>
+
+<p class="intro">
+"So shall he read elder truths, grand truths, fearful truths.
+And so shall our mission be accomplished, that from God we had&mdash;to
+plague his heart till we had unfolded the capacities of his
+spirit."&mdash;OUR LADY OF SORROWS.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Mavins, like Wynchcombe Friars, was set upon a
+ridge; but the house was comparatively modern and
+here was no falling and rising sea of pine-tops splashed
+in dark foam against the sky.  Lawns and shrubberies
+ended in a low brick wall matted with arabis and
+aubretia.  And beyond the wall lay Surrey, and
+again more Surrey, merging into Sussex: gentle
+undulations, interlacing ridges and, in the clear
+weather, the sweeping line of the Downs, mistily
+blue along the horizon.  When the wind was in the
+south, Sir Howard Meredith would call upon his visitors
+to note the whiff of sea-salt in the air: and those
+who were sufficiently imaginative would scent that
+phantom whiff with enthusiasm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But there was, now, no host at Mavins, though
+there were many guests.  For Sir Howard had entirely
+devoted his beautiful place to those that&mdash;excepting
+prisoners&mdash;were perhaps the saddest aftermath of war
+as conceived and waged by modern Germany: men
+broken in nerve and spirit; strong men, shaken by
+dreams and delusions, who dreaded the night and
+cried out in their sleep; men, who sat alone and
+wept, quietly, hopelessly, because their manhood was
+gone from them, and with it, their power of
+self-control.  One there was, a mere boy of two and
+twenty, crazed permanently, the doctors feared,
+because he had seen a lad of his own platoon crucified
+with indignity by German soldiers; and&mdash;he could not
+forget.  That was the secret torment of so many who
+came out of the trenches seemingly unscathed:&mdash;they
+could not forget.  Mark knew.  It had been the
+chief of his own troubles in that backwater in France.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet now, for a time, under the deadening influence
+of nervous depression, he lived and moved among
+these tragic fellow-sufferers almost as though they
+were not.  The first few weeks of isolation from all he
+loved, drifted by like a timeless, colourless dream.
+He seldom opened a paper or troubled to read his
+letters.  He wrote none, and hardly a trace remained
+of his keen interest in the war.  He learnt with
+blank indifference, that the Russian "steam-roller"
+was rolling to some purpose through Galicia, that the
+first Zeppelins had arrived in England and dropped
+bombs on the east coast.  Even the more personal
+news of Ralph's gallant death in action scarcely
+seemed to reach him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was the crazed boy and his story that gave him
+the first sharp twinge of pain&mdash;herald of returning life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He heard it from Honor Lenox, Maurice's elder
+sister.  She was at Mavins that winter, doing V.A.D. work,
+to which she had devoted herself unremittingly
+since the outbreak of war.  As hospital orderly,
+she had been through the siege of Antwerp and the
+retreat upon Ostend.  She had ministered to stunned
+and starving refugees, had earned conspicuous
+distinction in advance ambulance work, and had lately
+been decorated by the King.  A brief collapse,
+following on those strenuous months in Flanders,
+obliged her for the moment, to be content with lighter
+work at home: and Mark, on arrival, had been
+practically given into her charge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was a tall, plain girl, strikingly plain: with
+her father's rough-cut features and clear northern
+eyes.  The two were already acquainted: and Mark,
+in his present mood, found refreshment in her
+bluntness and dry humour and strong, unbeautiful face.
+The normal Mark did not suffer plain women gladly.
+But at the moment it was Honor's chief asset that
+she was neither fair, fascinating nor conspicuously a
+woman.  The revulsion&mdash;as Keith had prophesied&mdash;was
+complete.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was virtue also in her sane, soldierly attitude
+towards the war.  She neither denounced it as "devilish
+and senseless," nor harped morbidly on horrors.  She
+had seen both sides of the shield.  She knew&mdash;as he
+knew&mdash;that from the pains of hell spring the splendours
+of sacrifice and devotion: that the true peace
+which passes understanding is not the prerogative of
+the shirker and the pacifist; that in the trenches and
+even in the shambles of a modern battlefield, "Death
+rages but he does not reign."  There you have,
+perhaps, the main distinction between those who have
+been in the firing line and those who have not: between
+the soldiers who have resisted unto blood, and the
+ineffectives&mdash;willing and unwilling&mdash;obsessed by casualty
+lists, atrocities and shattered men.  That spirit
+Mark chiefly associated with Bel: and he was the
+more thankful to find no trace of it in the daughter of
+Sir Eldred Lenox.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not that she soothed him with fairy tales.  On
+the contrary, she recounted, purposely and in plain
+terms, many of her worst experiences; probing him
+with stiletto pricks of pain sharper than his own; if so
+be that she might stab his spirit broad awake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was his unnatural indifference to Ralph's death
+that had prompted her to tell him in full the pitiful
+tale of that crazed subaltern: a brilliant Oxford scholar,
+whose brain had been unhinged not by the normal
+rigours of war but by the abnormal cruelty of
+scientifically dehumanised German soldiers.  The
+telling of it pained her horribly; and the hearing
+of it hurt Mark as nothing had hurt him yet
+since that night when the sword of realisation pierced
+his soul.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Manlike, pain vented itself in anger.  Why the
+dickens did she talk about such beastliness? he
+demanded irritably: and she knew she had touched a
+vulnerable spot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't&mdash;as a rule," she said without apology.
+"But, now and then, something goads me to remind
+myself and others that this isn't an ordinary war.
+It's a crusade against organised powers of evil.  It
+makes vengeance almost a sacred duty.  And we've
+got to realise things like that&mdash;however much we
+shrink from them&mdash;in order to crush out, absolutely,
+the spirit that makes them possible."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was no fervour, no touch of the didactic in her
+quiet, rather flat voice.  It spoke, with deep
+conviction, the very thoughts that had burned in his own
+brain after hearing the story of "la petite Pauline";
+and for the first time the real Mark looked with real
+interest at Maurice's sister.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's so," he agreed gruffly.  "Not much use
+though for the poor crocked-up devils who can't help
+any more."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked back at him in her direct, masculine
+fashion.  A smile hovered in her eyes.  "There are
+crocks <i>and</i> crocks!" she said.  "And there are other
+ways besides fighting.  Think them over.  You'll
+find it as good as a tonic."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did think them over: and it was as good as a
+tonic.  He reverted more than once to the subject of
+young Carmichael.  Was there no hope?  A shadow
+of hope, Honor told him.  His mother&mdash;who came
+at intervals&mdash;was heart-broken.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That last bit of information took effect, as intended.
+Mark began to talk of his own mother.  He also began
+to think about Ralph and Sheila.  He wondered....
+He wanted to know....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By slow degrees, light was breaking through the fog
+that shrouded his spirit.  Then came Sheila's letter
+about Ralph, that let in quite a painful flood of
+sensation.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+"I wonder, have they told you," she wrote, "that
+my Ralph has had the honour of dying for his country?
+It was an honour he coveted with all his heart; and
+they say he came by it splendidly.  I promised him
+long ago that, if this happened, I would not grieve
+nor wear mourning.  But, oh Mark (if you are really
+waking up again), you will know, better than any one
+but Mums, how blank everything feels some days
+when pride seems no prop at all and there is simply the
+emptiness&mdash;the longing&mdash;&mdash;.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He was the one bit of home that seemed really to
+belong.  I know to the outside world he seemed just a
+very ordinary subaltern overburdened with brains.  But
+I'm sure England need think no shame of her very
+ordinary subalterns judging from their record in war.
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  'To sacrifice she prompts her best,<br>
+  She reaps them as the sower reaps.'<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+That's Meredith, isn't it?  It has the sound of him.
+Mother has really been wonderful in refusing to let our
+private sorrow interfere with her work.  She says we
+are all dedicated&mdash;with an extra big D.  You know her
+way.  But it is not all talk.  She's proved that these
+last few weeks.  Dear Mark, forgive if my letter
+makes you sad.  It's only to you two I can say a little
+of what I feel&mdash;on the bad days.  In between, I can
+go quietly on and be grateful for my gift, such as it is,
+and pray that you may soon be home again to cheer
+the brave Mums in her great loneliness!  I go to her
+whenever I can.  Mr. Macnair is ambulance driver
+in France again.  I do wish he would come back.
+And oh&mdash;a fresh trouble.  My dear Mona is very ill
+with typhoid at Boulogne.  I long to go to her.
+But I'm badly wanted here.  Isn't your right arm
+well enough yet to manage a letter?  Mums tells me
+she hasn't heard.  Half a dozen lines, the merest
+scrawl even, would cheer her ever so.  Do try.  Yours
+always, Sheila."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+That letter gave him a sudden blessed sense of
+enlargement; as if a window had been opened in his
+brain.  It also pricked his awakening conscience: and
+he did try, with very fair success.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Surely and steadily his right hand regained its
+cunning: and even the tentative return of power
+feelingly persuaded him that this skilled servant of his
+brain, was worth all the rest of his body put together.
+After all, he had willed to risk everything; to give
+everything.  He had recognised that the price of
+patriotism might be a very long price: but he had never
+dreamed of paying it in this form.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He tried to express some of these thoughts in a long
+outpouring to that brave lonely mother he had treated
+so ill.  He also attempted a letter to Sheila: but the
+only thing he really wanted to tell her was the one
+thing that must never be told.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having written the words: "My dear Sheila," he
+sat there, pen in hand, cursing the fate that forbade
+him to add, "I love you&mdash;I love you&mdash;I love
+you."  Simply that.  The sheer relief of it!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suppose he did&mdash;what would her answer be?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oh&mdash;coward and fool!  Apart from every other
+disability how could he account for Bel?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the end he wrote to her at some length of Ralph
+and Mona and Mums.  It frightened him afterwards
+to realise how near he had come to the cliff's edge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila's mention of Mona set him thinking of
+Maurice.  Queer that Miss Lenox had never
+mentioned him.  Next time they were alone together he
+spoke of Mona's illness and asked after her brother.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Honor's face clouded a little.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My poor Maurice," she said, "was not made for
+great days or terrible events.  He has had a bitter
+bad time.  It has broken him to pieces.  And Father,
+who is always rather down on him, takes it very hard.
+There are the Desmond boys winning decorations&mdash;and
+his own eldest son&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How about his eldest daughter?" Mark asked smiling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh&mdash;she's a faint consolation!  But not quite the
+same thing.  Dick's doing good work in the Flying
+Corps, which is much more to the point."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But Maurice&mdash;where is he, poor chap?  There's
+good stuff in him if he isn't a fighter.  I'd like to hear
+more."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So she told him more; glad of his increasing concern
+for others; though it went hard with her to speak freely
+of anything so near her heart.  Maurice, it seemed,
+had returned to the Front after a fortnight in the
+hospital where Mona worked and a week at home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In love with her&mdash;is he?" Mark asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  Very much so.  That made a fresh jar with
+Father.  He's devoted to Colonel and Mrs. Laurence.
+But he could not bear the idea of Dr. Videlle's
+daughter marrying his son; though he wouldn't
+have Mrs. Laurence know that for the world.  It
+was a most awkward tangle.  Father objected and
+Maurice insisted; and it quite spoilt the poor boy's
+crumb of leave.  Then he had an awful spell in the
+trenches.  His letters to me&mdash;" she paused to steady
+her lips.  "I think&mdash;he was thankful when he got hit.
+But it's his right hand&mdash;badly damaged&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh Lord!  D'you mean&mdash;he may lose it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm not sure.  They still hope to save it&mdash;partially.
+He's back at Boulogne.  The same hospital.  His
+poor nerves worse than ever.  Mother's out there
+too."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And Mona?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Honor was silent a moment; then she said in a
+quiet, toneless voice: "Mona ... is dead.  I only
+heard yesterday!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good God!"  Mark's voice was hushed also.  He
+wanted to say more.  Miss Lenox was evidently upset.
+But before he found the adequate word, she was
+speaking again in the same level tone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is sometimes difficult, in these days, to go on
+believing that God is good.  Maurice knew&mdash;she
+cared.  He spoke to her a few days before she fell ill.
+It gave him such a lift.  And now&mdash;he's half crazed,
+Mother says.  They talk of sending him here.  I hope
+they will.  Professor Langton is working marvels."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They did send him to Mavins, with the remains of
+his right hand in a sling.  The bulk of it had been
+saved.  Only the little finger and half the forefinger
+were gone: so that eventually, with practice, he would
+draw and paint again.  But at present no word of comfort
+could reach his half-distracted brain.  All day long
+he talked wildly and rapidly of Mona; and at night he
+could not sleep for dreams.  A troublesome case; not
+an obstinate one, the friendly Professor of Psychology
+told Honor; but it was not advisable at present to let
+him see much of his sister or his friend.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile the girl devoted herself to Sir Mark, and
+found no small comfort in his gradual progress toward
+a saner, happier mood of mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Keith&mdash;definitely back from France&mdash;came to see
+him oftener now, and they talked of Sheila.  To Mark
+the mere sound of her name was like the music of
+running water in a barren land.  It struck him that
+Keith seemed to be a good deal at Westover Court;
+and he fell to wondering about "Mums."  Because
+he, Mark, had not been knocked out, did the queer
+fellow mean to keep silence for ever?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It also struck him as strange that his mother had
+never been to see him.  At last he asked for her;
+and she came, straightway, on the wings of the first
+available express.  Resolutely she had held to her
+hard resolve not to go near him till he needed her; and
+now she had her reward.  He said little, but his hand
+clutched hers; and his eyes, that had a gleam of the old
+light in them, followed her wherever she moved.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come again soon,"  he said at parting; and she
+came again soon....
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+So February slipped by; and light increased without
+and within.  Far away, in the Mediterranean, by way
+of prelude to the splendid and terrible Gallipoli
+adventure, British warships were lobbing shells into
+the forts along the Narrows: and cheerful prophets
+predicted the fall of Constantinople within a month.
+And still, across the Channel, the interminable
+underground war dragged on.  And still a sanguine
+Government did its casual best to defeat the frankly
+malignant German with the maximum of polite consideration;
+to which end, Ministers temporised, fatally,
+over conscription and enemy aliens and high explosives
+and other awkward trifles that involved the removal of
+kid gloves.  And the voice of criticism and division&mdash;hushed
+in the inaugural days of 1914&mdash;was once more
+heard in the land.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And still, week after week, War&mdash;that is no respecter
+of Governments&mdash;exacted its inexorable toll of
+the young and the incomparably brave; and the fearful
+also: and from Germany came the cry of the
+prisoners&mdash;starved, tortured, yet unbroken&mdash;"How long,
+O Lord, how long!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Each dawn brought some new shock of grief to
+hundreds of hearts; brought also its golden grain of
+healing to those already stricken&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At Mavins, as the days grew longer and milder,
+healing came gradually both to Maurice and Mark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Maurice's mercurial nature had responded more
+rapidly to both atmosphere and treatment than the
+doctors had dared to hope.  He talked less and slept
+more.  The strange, unseeing stare went out of his
+eyes; and there came a day when Langton&mdash;who
+looked favourably on Miss Lenox&mdash;declared that it
+rested with her to complete his cure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Events justified him; and Mark found a new interest
+not untinged with envy, in watching the two together.
+The very qualities that made for discord between
+Maurice and his father, seemed to link the brother
+and sister in a bond closer than common.  It set Mark
+thinking of Ailsa and wondering&mdash;would he eventually
+arrive at accepting Sheila in that relation, the only one
+now possible between them.  Increasingly he longed
+to see her.  But she did not come and he would not ask.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In this fashion February drew to an end and Dr. Norton
+came down to inspect his former patient.  In
+his old guarded manner, he expressed himself satisfied
+with Mark's general condition; and confirmed the
+opinion of his colleague at Mavins that improvement,
+slight yet unmistakable, had already begun.  But
+how far it might ultimately go, not a doctor among
+them would venture to prophesy yet.  Mark's nerves,
+at all events, were obviously on the mend.  For a time,
+they told him, he must "go softly" and keep clear of
+worry or strain.  The more normal his life and surroundings,
+the better his chance of complete mental readjustment;
+and there was talk of going home before long.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That, unquestionably, was a move in the right
+direction: and yet&mdash;he felt half afraid.  Coward
+selfishness whispered that, in this peaceful backwater,
+"things" were easier to bear.  Manhood urged that
+he had been long enough on the shelf.  It was high
+time to rouse himself and give his country such service
+as he could; to conquer a certain morbid dread of
+facing his own world&mdash;in a wheeled chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did some hard and wholesome thinking on the
+subject while Maurice, in the transition stage, claimed
+the chief part of Honor's attention; and he discovered
+that here was the secret of his faint reluctance to go
+home, though well he knew that his mother was
+counting the days to his return.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He made that unheroic discovery on the last day of
+February, a day of fugitive, appealing beauty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With the help of the despised wheeled chair&mdash;that
+gave him a small measure of freedom&mdash;he had established
+himself in his special corner of the grounds, at
+the far end of the long low wall looking southward
+across Surrey and Sussex to the sea.  The February
+sun was warm as April.  Close to him loomed a
+wide-spreading yew, centuries old.  In the shadow of its
+blackness snowdrops gleamed; and on its uppermost
+branch sat a thrush, pouring out a torrent of song.
+Almost, in response to that brave music, Mark could
+feel the earth stirring in her sleep, even as his own
+benumbed spirit was stirring within him after the
+darkest winter he had ever known.  A light breeze
+blew from the south.  Stately masses of cloud drifted
+across the heavens; the Downs&mdash;grey-blue, against a
+toneless horizon&mdash;seemed astonishingly near....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark, brooding on them, recalled Meredith's
+phrase: "The Downs have swiftness."  They set a
+man longing for a winged horse or for the Seven-League
+boots.  At first he had hardly been able to
+bear the sight of them.  He was learning to bear it now;
+even as he was learning to accept cheerfully, almost
+gratefully, quite a number of things that in the
+beginning had seemed unendurable.  He was discovering,
+at first hand, the amazing adaptability of the human
+organism and the native resilience of his own spirit.
+There were black moods still, when the curses came.
+But these were increasingly offset by moods of
+high-hearted resolve to fling into his art all the energy
+and passion of his stultified life: moods far truer to his
+essential self; likelier therefore to endure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And on this February day of drifting cloud and
+snowdrops and a jubilant thrush, the more normal
+Mark held the field.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For an hour and a half, to his great satisfaction, he
+had been left alone with his sketch-book and Meredith's
+<i>Nature Poems</i>&mdash;a favourite, illustrated edition&mdash;and
+his own resurgent thoughts.  He knew now,
+definitely, that his time at Mavins was nearing an end.
+Dr. Carstairs had spoken yesterday of a week or ten days.
+That fact alone served to stiffen his manlier resolves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And there was also another fact; quite unlooked-for,
+decidedly stimulating.  Miss Lenox had discovered
+it in the <i>Times</i> that morning under the heading of
+"Army Honours."  It notified the award of the
+Distinguished Service Order to Lieut. Sir Mark Stuart
+Forsyth: and, from the bone-dry record appended,
+Mark made the surprising discovery that on two
+occasions he had "exhibited conspicuous coolness and
+courage."  Once, by his intrepid leading, he had
+carried a full trench against overwhelming odds: an
+unpleasant business, he remembered it very well.
+Another time during a retreat, when one flank of the
+battalion had been left in the air, he had, it seemed,
+held on tenaciously to a critical position and saved
+the regiment from annihilation.  That must have
+been on the terrible last day of his recollection, when
+he had himself been annihilated for his pains.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Baldly set down, it struck him as very ordinary
+average behaviour in the circumstances.  Quite likely
+poor old Maurice had been just as sporting now and
+then.  Only no one happened to notice.  It was all a
+matter of luck and partiality.  A war that rained
+shells, rained decorations&mdash;naturally enough.  It was
+very gratifying all the same, to have "stopped one":
+to possess a lasting memento of his own brief strenuous
+flash of effort.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And what did it amount to after all?  For sixty
+days&mdash;whether in billets or trenches, or in the stress of
+actual fighting&mdash;he had lived at the full stretch of his
+being.  He had quailed and suffered and exulted.  He
+had seen with his eyes that, in nature and in human
+nature, beauty shines out undimmed, though all the
+devils of hell are leagued for its extinction.  He had
+proved, in his own body and soul, that "in war man
+values the power which it affords to life of rising
+above life."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And now&mdash;this!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He glanced ruefully at the fur rug over his knees.
+Well, it was just a question whether those sixty days
+were not worth a lifetime of limitation.  But&mdash;the
+loss of Sheila!  There was the rub....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With a deliberate wrench he shifted his thoughts back
+to their starting-point&mdash;those three proud letters after
+his name.  He must write to the Colonel&mdash;and to
+"Mums."  No doubt she had been secretly watching
+that list for weeks!  And now there would be no
+holding her.  A wonder she had not wired already.
+She would need repressing badly; or goodness knew
+what manner of fool she would make of him.  He had
+been a beast to her all these weeks.  He would atone
+for it when he got home.  Then days seemed suddenly
+an intolerable time to wait.  Impatience stirred in
+him: the best possible sign.  He shook himself
+mentally&mdash;he had been mooning long enough;&mdash;and picked
+up his book again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was open at "The Thrush in February."  Nothing
+like Meredith for tuning up the strings of a man's
+spirit: and this particular poem vibrates with the
+morning quality of his genius; his sane loyalty to
+Earth&mdash;Mother and Slayer in one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He read on, now, from the point at which his
+personal affairs had intruded on the poet's thought.
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  "She, judged of shrinking nerves, appears,<br>
+  A Mother whom no cry can melt;&mdash;<br>
+  A slayer, yea, as when she pressed<br>
+  Her savage to the slaughter-heaps.<br>
+  To sacrifice she prompts her best;<br>
+  She reaps them as the sower reaps.<br>
+  But read her thought; to speed the race&mdash;<br>
+  And stars rush forth of blackest night...."<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+Again Mark paused, pondering those vigorous lines
+that might well have been written in this year of turmoil;
+of evil, self-exposed and rampant, that it may be
+the more squarely smitten.  "To speed the race," at
+no matter what cost of individual life, individual pain:
+there you have the hard paradox of Nature, underlying
+every form of human activity; but focused,
+intensified, and poignantly realised when "God holds
+his assizes and hurls the nations on one another."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If a cog in the machinery is broken, what matter?
+There are scores of others available.  It has given its
+mite of service toward the progress of the whole.  But
+this particular cog was not altogether useless even
+now; for the which compensation God be praised.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To that mountain-top of philosophy Mark had
+clambered painfully enough: and to-day he caught an
+echo of it, clear and heartening, in the song of the poet
+and the song of the thrush&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this point he became aware of approaching footsteps
+and voices.  The thrush became aware of them
+also and took flight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They drew nearer; and their owners came into view:
+Keith, Mums, Sheila,&mdash;all three of them, with Maurice
+and his sister.  Now he knew why there had been
+no telegram.  Just like her.  He might have guessed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Closing his book, he waved a welcome and his
+mother hurried forward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A surprise visit of congratulation, darling," she
+explained superfluously.  "Well done!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she kissed him, unashamedly, before them
+all.  There were moments when the Irish streak in her
+carried the day.  There were also moments when even
+a son could not find it in his heart to be repressive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark had enough ado to repress himself, when
+Sheila stood before him, her soft, cool hand in his; and
+Keith demanded gravely what the dickens he meant
+by giving his family such a shock: and Maurice, the
+born talker, looked on enviously and said nothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The happy event, the sunshine and the smell of
+spring in the air went to their heads like wine.  It
+was as if some tension within had snapped.  They
+talked nonsense once again with zeal and fluency; and
+Mark himself was as foolish as any of them.  It was
+a vast relief, after those endless grey weeks when
+humour&mdash;the star of life&mdash;had dwindled to a farthing
+dip in the outer dark.  Now it sparkled again, clear as
+ever: and Mark found it very good....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, quite casually, in the middle of it all, Keith
+slipped in his own surprise contribution, that had been
+kept a profound secret during its incubation.  It
+consisted of a small motor car, specially designed, light
+and easy to handle, in which&mdash;Mark with Keith's
+help&mdash;could drive about his beloved country, and regain a
+measure of the independent movement so dear to his
+heart.  Keith himself was responsible for the thought,
+but the car was to be a combined gift from all three;
+the outward and visible sign of their joy in his return.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark&mdash;too overwhelmed for mere thanks&mdash;could
+only evince the liveliest interest in the "little beauty"
+and her manifold perfections.  From car talk they
+drifted naturally to ambulance driving and an
+exchange of experiences between Honor and Keith.
+Even Maurice revived considerably under Lady
+Forsyth's sympathetic handling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And through it all, Mark's inner self was chiefly aware
+of Sheila's voice, too seldom heard, and Sheila's
+eyes&mdash;their twilight colour intensified by the grey-violet hat
+and gown that she wore in place of conventional
+mourning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She sat on the low wall, a little apart from the group
+round his chair; her sweet, serious face shadowed by
+the double loss of brother and friend.  The shadow
+lifted a little at sight of Mark's sketch-book.  With a
+glance at him for permission, she opened it and went
+through it slowly, lingering a long while over each
+page.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wanted her to himself so urgently that he wished
+the others at Jericho.  Now and again he contrived
+an exchange of glances.  Then he would hold her
+gaze a minute and reluctantly let her go.  He had no
+business whatever to do this: and he knew it.  But
+to-day he felt like a schoolboy out of bounds.  He
+refused to look beyond the sunshine into the waiting
+dark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Honor Lenox, he found, had planned a semi-secluded
+tea-party in a corner of the wide verandah,&mdash;the
+real Indian article; added by Sir Howard, who
+declared he would as soon live without shaving-soap as
+without a verandah.  And Mark enjoyed it all
+consumedly, though not five minutes' talk did he get
+with Sheila alone.  Suddenly and surprisingly, life had
+righted itself in defiance of tragic limitations.  The
+good minute would pass; but the fact that it had
+come at all was of hopeful augury.  And while it
+lasted, Mark could forget everything except that he
+had not lost his art; and that Sheila, however
+unattainable, was part of the vital fabric of his life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Will you still be at home when I come?" he asked
+her at parting; and she shook her head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"'Fraid not.  I go back on Friday, when 'Mums'
+goes to Lady John.  But I'm to get leave for a visit
+soon, she says&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>I</i> say&mdash;" he corrected, under his breath; and
+again there passed between them that flash of understanding;
+a direct contact of spirit with spirit, never
+achieved in all his passionate courtship of Bel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oh, that he could banish her from his memory as
+though she had never been!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Bel would not let herself be so easily forgotten.
+Though disenchantment was complete, she could still
+reassert herself, at inopportune moments, to tarnish
+a love so different in quality that there was need of
+some other name to call it by.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+These thoughts visited him much later on that same
+evening, as he sat beside his fire reviewing the events
+of a day that marked a definite step towards the
+recovery of his spiritual balance; of a normal, if
+tempered, thankfulness for all that still remained
+to him of joy in life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lately Maurice had taken to looking in at this time
+for a talk; and he very soon appeared, with the
+inevitable cigarette and a rather doleful countenance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a while he sat smoking moodily, staring at the
+fire.  Then, to Mark's surprise, he said in a
+constrained voice: "I suppose Honor told you&mdash;about
+Mona."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."  Mark did his best to convey his own dumb
+depth of fellow-feeling in that one word.  Maurice
+let out a great sigh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She&mdash;cared.  She'd have married me, Father or
+no.  Seeing Miss Melrose brought it all back again.
+She ... Mona ... understood.  <i>She</i> didn't think
+me a hopeless rotter because I've been a bit broken up
+by this cursed, inhuman war."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That tone towards the world's greatest crusade
+against machine-made tyranny and brutality jarred
+Mark always.  And it savoured too much of Bel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not a bit of use cursing the war, old chap," he
+said kindly.  "Nearer the mark to curse the apostles
+of cheapness for cheapness' sake, who thwarted Joe
+Chamberlain, killed our economic independence, and
+delivered the Empire into the tentacles of the German
+octopus.  But it's all done now; and we've just got to
+put our backs into it and pull things through.  You've
+done your level best, Maurice, and no one thinks you a
+hopeless rotter.  <i>I</i> don't.  Your sister doesn't.  Your
+mother&mdash;&mdash;?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Maurice frowned.  "I'm hanged if I know what
+Mother thinks.  She's awfully fond of me.  But she's
+not the soft kind.  And she hugely admires the genuine
+man of action; which accounts for my splendid but
+rather formidable father.  <i>He</i> thinks me the out and
+outest rotter that ever stepped.  If it wasn't for Honor,
+God knows where I'd be at this moment.  And, as for
+going home&mdash;I believe a week of it would simply smash
+me up again.'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"'M.  I know what you mean.  Why not come
+along to my place when you're quit of this?  We've
+both got to make a fresh start somehow; and I've still
+to complete your conversion to Beauty and the
+Classics!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"D'you <i>mean</i> that?" Maurice asked in genuine delight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Rather.  It would give me a spurt.  And your
+sister could come for weekends.  She's a rare good
+sort."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Wish I had half her pluck.  She ought to have
+been the soldier.  I believe she'd give her eyes to take
+my place; and here am I&mdash;wondering if they've
+lopped and chopped my precious hand enough to keep
+me out of those unholy trenches for good."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark, scanning his friend's rueful profile, decided that
+mere sympathy was not the tonic for his complaint.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You can't shoot without your trigger finger," he
+remarked in practical tones.  "But that's no matter,
+now they've given you a commission."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Maurice grimaced.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You don't want to go back&mdash;in any capacity, eh?"
+Mark asked casually.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No.  I'm damned if I do.  Honestly, d'you suppose
+any man does who has a grain of sensibility in his
+composition?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark was silent a moment, considering.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know.  Hard to say.  In either case,
+they wouldn't shout it from the housetops.
+Personally, I was keen to get back.  Sheer perversity,
+perhaps: but it's true.  God knows, killing and getting
+killed, the way it's done now, is a pretty gruesome
+business.  But exterminating Prussianised Germans is
+a service to the civilised world; not to mention a man's
+first duty to his country.  And to me there's beauty
+everywhere, Maurice, even on a battle-field.  And,
+oh Lord, it's big.  It's <i>real</i>&mdash;overpoweringly real."  He
+paused and set his teeth hard.  "I simply hate
+being out of it all&mdash;shelved.  Wish to God I was in
+your case!  And you can't have the face to pretend
+you'd sooner be&mdash;as I am."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Maurice was lighting a fresh cigarette.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Honour bright," he said, "I was thinking out
+there, this afternoon, what a lucky devil you were!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark flashed round on him.  "Lucky&mdash;<i>me</i>?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes: as things go these days.  You're through
+with the worst of it.  You've done jolly well.  Your
+people think no end of you and you'll probably do
+thundering big things once you get started again.
+As for me&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"As for <i>you</i>," Mark's friendly tone had a touch of
+sternness, "you're a graceless ingrate.  Your hand's
+been saved.  You've everything before you and your
+spurs still to win.  Strikes me, the sooner I get on with
+your conversion, all round, the better!"
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+But later, when Maurice had gone, those astonishing
+words "lucky devil" returned and walked to and fro
+in his brain and flashed light into dark corners, where
+for weeks no light had been.  His own tragedy had
+seemed to him a thing so absolute that he had
+forgotten in his misery, the relative nature of all
+sensation: and he frankly admitted, now, that "as
+these times go" a worse fate might have befallen him.
+On the wings of imagination, he had explored the long
+unchanging road ahead of him&mdash;and had found it too
+hard to travel.  And again he had forgotten that
+the actual journey must be taken day by day, mile by
+mile; that, imperceptibly, the face of that road would
+change, in response to his own unconquered spirit
+and the healing influence of time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Life, that is more inexorable than death, cannot
+away with that crowning mercy.  The veiled hours
+come to us single file.  Were it not so, which of us
+would find courage to face them at all?  In war,
+and in the anguish of blows that shatter faith and
+courage, it is perhaps this crowning mercy that
+withholds tortured humanity from running headlong down
+a steep place into the sea&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark sat late that night over the red embers of his
+fire, smoking ... pondering....
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0402"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER II
+</h3>
+
+<p class="intro2">
+  "Even the wise man's feet are turned astray<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;by tumult of the soul."<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;PINDAR.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+On a certain afternoon of March, Lady Forsyth sat in
+a third-class carriage of a certain casual train that
+loafed along the line, these disorganised days, between
+Waterloo and Westover.  She religiously travelled
+third now, and as religiously put the difference into
+her war-purse for prisoners.  Mark was not told, lest
+he prove unmanageable: and Keith's objections
+had been overruled with a high hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This particular train was the slowest in the day.
+Helen never patronised it except from force of
+circumstances; and she irreverently christened it "the
+British Government"&mdash;not altogether without
+provocation.  For, as the War dragged inconclusively on,
+and Germans continued to flourish in forbidden areas,
+in the City, and even in harbours of the first
+importance, she found herself growing more critical, more
+intolerant towards that sacrosanct institution.  If
+she could be said to dislike, whole-heartedly, anything
+in the nature of a human being, it was certain supple,
+self-regarding phrase-mongers who had been overlong
+predominant in the Mother of Parliaments.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hers was not the only heart, in those anxious times,
+that cried out for a Triumvirate: a sailor, a soldier, and
+a genuine statesman to organise all the resources of a
+great and willing Empire for the salvation of the world.
+But the cry went up in vain.  And still politicians
+talked and soldiers prayed for the Great Offensive, and
+the war of trenches and sectors went lumbering on.
+Constantinople had not fallen within the given month.
+A feeling hovered in the air that something had gone
+wrong with this very great adventure; that arrangements
+had been sketchy; action premature.  And
+there were uncomfortable rumours about the King of
+Greece&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, suddenly, the West had leaped to life.
+"Victory at last!" sang the posters and the headlines.
+And the journalists, given a freer hand this time,
+vied with each other in chronicling Homeric feats and
+"enormous enemy losses." ...
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That was a week ago.  And now it appeared there
+had been some mistake about this "great and glorious
+victory."  One indisputable fact stood out&mdash;the casualty
+lists.  It began to look as if, after all, they were
+likely to prove the biggest thing about it.  Helen
+Forsyth had heard talk in London that she tried to
+dismiss as mere pessimism; but her instinct told her it
+was probably true.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The train groaned and jolted to a standstill:&mdash;Little
+Franton.  It was far too courteous to overlook even
+the smallest thing in stations.  Another hour to
+Westover.  Lady Forsyth leaned back and closed her
+eyes.  She had had two strenuous days in town.  She
+was very tired and longing to get home&mdash;to Mark.  It
+was still a strange and wonderful fact that home
+should also mean Mark.  He was her private reason
+for courting the present infliction.  She had failed to
+catch an earlier express and refused to wait for a later
+one.  It was sufficiently distracting being called away
+for a night so soon after his return.  How they would
+laugh at her when she got back!  And how good it was
+to be laughed at again: even if, in between, there were
+still moods of gloomy silence or of irritability, that kept
+her anxiety at stretch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The first few days of their frank joy in each other
+had been flawless.  And for her, there was the secret
+satisfaction of having him all to herself again, with no
+superfluous Bel to claim the lion's share of his thoughts
+and heart: a forgivable form of selfishness that perhaps
+only a mother can condone.  But the necessary
+intrusion of the world at large marked the beginning
+of trouble.  It was plain that he would not easily
+overcome a certain sensitive shrinking from outside
+people; though, in his more normal moods, he spurned
+this weakness and overrode it ruthlessly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For this reason, visitors&mdash;with the exception of
+Dr. Warburton and the Sinclairs&mdash;were not very welcome.
+Warburton was on the "sick list" combating a severe
+bout of rheumatism and Sir Nevil, like Mark, was
+knocked out of the actual fighting, with a frost-bitten
+foot and his left forearm gone to save the spread of
+blood poisoning from a septic wound.  Wynchmere
+tenants and workers, eager to come and do him homage,
+would not be denied; and Mark himself, touched to
+the heart, was yet consumed with shyness at the prospect
+of facing the music.  A few days ago, with Keith's
+diplomatic help, Lady Forsyth had persuaded him to
+summon an informal afternoon gathering&mdash;the gamekeeper,
+the manager of their handicrafts colony, his
+better class tenants and their wives.  And he had been
+at his best: friendly, sympathetic, full of humorous
+talk.  She had only discovered the effort it cost him
+by the reaction that followed: and had reproached
+herself not a little for having pressed the point.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Keith, however, insisted rightly that the sooner
+Mark did violence to his natural shrinking the sooner
+he would conquer it: and conquer it he must.  But his
+recurrent headaches troubled her.  She had made a
+point of seeing Dr. Norton while in town.  Her faith
+in him was implicit and his encouraging view of things
+had comforted her considerably.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Give him plenty of fresh air.  A little gentle
+massage.  And avoid friction over trifles."  That had
+been the great man's final injunction, heartily
+endorsed by Helen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Privately she had feared that the massage part of it
+might produce friction straightaway: and at lunch, in
+Mrs. Laurence's war-work flat (Colonel Laurence
+was serving in France) that fear had been confirmed.
+Honor Lenox and Sheila, who had struck up a friendship,
+were lunching there too; and Honor bore witness
+that, when massage was prescribed at Mavins, Mark
+had proved intractable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I believe if I could have done it myself," she
+added, "I might have persuaded him.  But nothing
+would induce him to let 'a strange woman maul his
+head.'  And they thought it unadvisable to press the
+point.  But now&mdash;why not Sheila?  The very person."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Naturally that had been Helen's first thought, and
+Sheila's also.  But the older woman&mdash;because of her
+secret hope&mdash;had felt a scrupulous hesitancy about
+volunteering the suggestion; and the girl had her own
+private qualms to overcome.  Both were proportionately
+grateful for Honor's blunt directness, and common-sense,
+professional point of view.  She saw only a
+man in need of healing and the one acceptable healer
+happily on the spot: and on the whole, Lady Forsyth
+felt justified in taking the same view.  It had finally
+been decided that she should sound Mark on the
+subject and let Sheila know the result.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After all, his complete recovery was a matter of the
+first importance.  She had no sure knowledge of
+Sheila's heart; and, as regards her own son, she was
+altogether in the dark.  Since that day at the
+Nursing Home, he had never mentioned Bel: and she
+devoutly hoped he never gave a thought to that
+devastating young woman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Only to-day, she had heard from Lyndsay Laurence
+that, in January, Bel had deserted Harry O'Neill and
+gone upon a protracted visit to friends in the west of
+England where Zeppelins were not.  She wasn't
+afraid of them, Mrs. Laurence had explained with a
+gleam in her serious blue eyes, she merely objected
+to living in a Zeppelin area when there were other
+areas available.  Further, it appeared that some
+casual word let fall by Harry had given Mr. Maitland
+an inkling of Mark's generosity.  Certainly he had
+spent his holidays in the west of England; had duly
+proposed to a Bel no longer penniless&mdash;and been
+rejected.  Helen was exceedingly glad to hear it.
+She wondered if Mark would appreciate the humour
+of it, but dared not risk telling him&mdash;yet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His uncertain moods put a severer strain upon her
+than she would admit even to herself.  Even her longing
+to get back to him was secretly tinged with dread
+lest something should upset him and spoil the
+whole evening.  Lately, she had persuaded him to
+sing again; and sometimes, with that or her own
+music, she could exorcise the fiends that tormented
+him.  But if any one could spirit them away permanently
+it would be Sheila: and ... supposing things
+went farther still&mdash;well, why not?  The question had
+a touch of defiance, as though some unseen mentor
+had ventured a rebuke.  Mentor or no, she could not,
+or would not see any cause or just impediment.  For
+once in a way, she&mdash;who set such store by truth in the
+inward parts, was not altogether honest with herself: a
+pardonable lapse, in the circumstances.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Could Mark once be made to realise that a woman
+loved him enough to marry him, disabled as he was,
+all his uncertain moods and irritations would vanish
+into air.  In time, she felt convinced, this cruel
+paralysis would loosen its hold on him; and if Sheila cared
+sufficiently to take all risks, whose business was it to
+come between them?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But as usual she was racing ahead miles too fast.
+Possibly neither of them cared&mdash;in that way.
+Probably Mark would snub the massage idea.  More
+than probably he would now refuse to marry Sheila
+even if he loved her to distraction.  So she swung
+round again to those jarring uncertainties that threatened,
+almost, to spoil the joy of getting him back....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this point her attention was distracted from
+personal worries by women's voices opposite.  One of
+them she recognised: Mrs. Beck, proprietor of the
+Post Office and sweet shop at Wynchmere.  It was
+the War, of course.  People of all grades and classes
+could still talk of little else: and Helen, keeping
+her eyes shut, dismissed her own anxieties and
+listened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a compensation for the occasional discomforts
+of travelling third that one caught glimpses of
+the War through the eyes of working men and women
+who neither painted it all red nor garnished it with
+false sentimentalities; but accepted it&mdash;cheerfully,
+sullenly or doggedly&mdash;as one more item among the
+many bewildering puzzles of life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Said the voice that was not Mrs. Beck's: "Your son
+'as 'e gone back yet to them trenches?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No.  'E's not near fit: never was," came Mrs. Beck's
+emphatic tones.  "But 'e'll be goin' sure 'nough
+before long."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Frettin' to get back, is he?  My word, it's no
+pantomime.  I got a brother been out since Christmas.
+Up to his blessed middle in water.  Matches an' fags
+too damp for strikin'.  You do 'ear some tell they
+want to go back.  An' it makes yer wonder&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Want to go back?  O' <i>course</i> they don't: not my
+boy, nor any of 'em.'  Mrs. Beck's voice was angry
+now as well as emphatic.  "'Oo could?  Them that
+talks that way says it to hearten their woman folks.
+But 'tis on'y fools as believes 'em.  And most on 'em
+says nothing.  They knows it's <i>djuty</i>.  So they shuts
+their teeth an' goes, wonderin' if they'll ever see 'ome
+again.  But they <i>says nothing</i>&mdash;not they.  It's 'ow
+they're made.  There was jest one o' mine did&mdash;once.
+Pore Alf!  'E come clean through Monsse, and all
+them 'orrors without a scratch.  An' when 'e was
+leavin' 'ome again, I says to 'im, I says: '<i>You'll</i> come
+back for sure.  You've a charmed life.'  But 'e shook
+'is 'ead.  'Their turn last time.  Mine next,' 'e said
+jokin'-like.  'E knew 'e'd be took&mdash;and 'e woz.'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Followed a sympathetic silence from the mere sister,
+and Helen&mdash;who remembered Alf and all the
+circumstances&mdash;thought shame of herself for allowing Mark's
+moods to blur the supreme fact that she had him
+safe&mdash;permanently safe&mdash;from jagged bayonets, explosive
+bullets, and all the scientific barbarities that still hurt
+her soul.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her one remaining treasure had not been "took."  It
+was enough.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The leisurely train was nearing home now.  She sat
+up and greeted Mrs. Beck; and they talked Neuve
+Chapelle till the name-board said "Westover" at last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And there was Keith on the platform and Mark
+awaiting her in the car, brown and vigorous looking;
+quite himself again in motor-coat and cap.  And she
+felt more than ever ashamed of fitful repinings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark evinced his joy at her return by keeping a
+hand on her knee under the fur rug and ragging her
+mercilessly all the way home.  At dinner he was
+quieter, with the brooding look in his eyes that Helen
+had learnt to dread.  Afterwards Keith settled them
+in the drawing-room and went off to the library
+leaving them together.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had now definitely given up his ambulance work
+on the other side and divided his time between local
+recruiting, a committee for the welfare of prisoners,
+and a deeply thought-out treatise on the psychological
+effects of war.  Underlying all these obvious activities,
+was the cherished conviction that Helen had need of
+him; more especially in these first difficult days
+... when Mark must learn, slowly and painfully, the art of
+adapting himself to his limited conditions of life.  He
+had never said another word about her to Mark;
+nor had he found the opportune moment for speaking
+to her himself.  He was hyper-fastidious in respect
+of that critical moment.  Life had, so far, given him
+no lovelier gift than her frank confidence and comradeship;
+and he was in no hurry to risk putting them out of
+gear, even for the sake of that greater gift for which
+Mark had encouraged him to hope.  Moreover, when
+a lover&mdash;and that lover, a Scot&mdash;has kept silence for
+fifteen years, it is almost easier to go on keeping silence
+than to speak: and Keith Macnair was essentially of
+those who know how to wait.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+The two he had left in the drawing-room fell silent
+after a little desultory talk.  Helen could think of
+nothing but Sheila.  Mark's reviving soul was
+shadowed by ominous signs of failure at Neuve Chapelle.
+Names of officers in his own battalion had been
+painfully prominent in the Roll of Honour: men he had
+lived with, fought with, and loved.  He was girding
+at his own inability to go out and replace one of them:
+picturing the welcome they would give him:&mdash;Mackail,
+Fordyce, the Colonel.  <i>His</i> name was not in the list,
+thank God.  Quite recently the battalion had been
+made up to strength and given a well-earned rest&mdash;only
+to be decimated afresh.  And no victory to show
+for it: nothing but a costly failure.  A bad omen for
+the Great Offensive that was to sweep the Germans
+back to the Rhine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It all hurt him so acutely that he could not manage
+to talk of it even to his mother: so he fell back on
+silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His quietness was deceptive: his frown might
+merely mean headache.  Helen could not know that
+the devil within was making peculiarly malignant
+remarks to him just then: and her very anxiety to
+choose the right moment made her almost certain to
+stumble on the wrong one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mums, will you play a little," he said at last,
+"if you're not too tired?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was too tired and she wanted to talk about
+Sheila: but she did not say so.  If he was "brooding,"
+music might be a wise prelude to speech.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a quarter of an hour or so, she played without
+her notes; slow soft music.  Preludes and Largoes.
+Then she came back to the fire determined to hesitate
+no longer.  She still remained standing, one foot on
+the fender-stool.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I saw Dr. Norton to-day," she remarked casually.
+"He wanted to hear about you&mdash;and the headaches.
+Swears by two simple remedies; plenty of
+fresh air&mdash;and massage:&mdash;the nerves of the head and
+neck.  And afterwards, at the flat, Honor suggested
+Sheila&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark's frown deepened unpromisingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My dear Mother, <i>I'm</i> all right.  For God's sake,
+don't fuss!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Darling, I'm not fussing.  Dr. Norton prescribed
+it.  And Sheila did wonders for me&mdash;after Boulogne."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can well believe it.  But I won't have her
+bothered on my account.  She's overworked as it is."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But, Mark, she delights in it," Helen persisted
+fatally.  "And for you, of all people&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes&mdash;for <i>me</i> of all people!" Mark flung out with
+a sudden uncontrollable bitterness that effectually
+silenced her.  Startled by his vehemence, she could
+only stand gazing at him, pain and bewilderment
+in her eyes.  But his own pain blinded him to hers and
+he sharply turned away his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh&mdash;<i>don't</i> look at me like that," he muttered.
+"You make too much of things.  All those poor chaps
+killed and wounded out there and you're worrying
+over my twopenny headaches.  Let Sheila come&mdash;if
+she's willing and if it'll make you happy."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His mother compressed her lips.  "Nothing will
+make me happy, Mark," she said quietly, "till I see
+you more nearly your old self again."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, I'll <i>never</i> be my old self again&mdash;if I live to
+be eighty: which God forbid!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The moment the words were out he realised their
+cruelty.  He felt as if he had struck her; and
+impulsively he put out his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she had turned from him swiftly to hide her
+tears&mdash;and she was gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helpless to follow her he sat there alone with his
+bitterness and his shame and his desperate longing
+for Sheila, that had instinctively prompted him to
+veto his mother's tempting plan....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently the door opened and Keith came in.
+He looked grave, almost stern.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What have you been saying to upset Helen?" he
+asked bluntly.  "Couldn't you see she was tired out?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beneath the reproof Mark detected the unconscious,
+possessive note of the lover and responded to it
+straightway, incurable lover that he was.  His faint
+annoyance at being taken to task evaporated.  If
+any one had hurt Sheila as he had just hurt Mums he
+would have wanted to commit murder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Where is she?  What's she doing?" he asked,
+patently contrite yet vouchsafing no explanation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In the library.  She <i>thinks</i> she's writing letters."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did she say anything?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is it likely?  What did <i>you</i> say?  That's the point."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark frowned.  "Nothing would induce me to
+repeat it.  It was only&mdash;she got worrying over my
+confounded head.  Massage and that sort of rot.
+She's keen for Sheila to come and try her hand on me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well&mdash;what's wrong with Sheila?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There's nothing wrong with Sheila," Mark answered;
+and this time the lover's note was in his own
+voice.  "But&mdash;at the moment, everything was wrong
+with me.  And, like a coward, I let fly at Mums."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Keith's eyes lightened strangely.  "Well, no matter
+how bad things are with you&mdash;and I don't belittle
+them&mdash;I can't have you hurting <i>her</i> like that.  She's
+suffered more this winter than you, or any of us, will
+ever know.  Sheila's been no less than an angel
+of consolation; and if Helen wants her here, let her
+come.  She would probably do you a deal of good.
+And anyway she'd be a healing influence in the house,
+which is precisely what you're both needing just now.
+Mark, old chap, I'm not down on you.  But&mdash;<i>you</i>
+understand?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  I understand."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A pause.  Mark felt suddenly tempted, by Keith's
+change of tone, to break through his own reserve.
+It would be a vast relief to tell Keith about Sheila and
+discover his unbiased view of things.  But Bel,
+though no longer loved, still left her trail over his life.
+Three months ago she was presumably all the world to
+him: and now&mdash;to make parade of his love for Sheila
+would seem but a poor compliment: an insult, almost.
+Hard to make another understand that the two
+emotions had as little in common as the girls themselves.
+Still harder to explain that strange, spiritual
+awakening in France.  Obviously, the Fates had
+decreed that she should come.  Let her come then,&mdash;and
+chance the result.  They could have devised no
+finer test for his power of self-mastery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Keith, who shrewdly suspected the truth, adjusted
+a blazing log with his foot and said nothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I say, go and tell Mums I want her," Mark said
+suddenly; and Keith, with a nod of approval, went
+back to the library.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark had time to grow impatient before she
+reappeared.  And, when she did come, he was
+tongue-tied.  He could only hold out his arms&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0403"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER III
+</h3>
+
+<p class="intro2">
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Through such souls alone<br>
+  God stooping shows sufficient of his light<br>
+  For us i' the dark to rise by."<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;BROWNING.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+So Sheila came again to Wynchcombe Friars&mdash;the
+real Wynchcombe Friars; no longer an empty shrine
+lit by twin lamps of memory and hope.  How gladly,
+how thankfully she answered that summons no one
+guessed, Mark least of all: and that fact alone made it
+possible to come.  Neither did she herself guess that
+Keith knew.  Her secret was as safe with him as in a
+tomb: and he it was who, three days later, drove out
+to fetch her in Mark's two-seater car, in which he
+was just beginning to reconnoitre his property and
+look up his tenants as of old.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If there was a third seat, for the inevitable
+attendant, I could have fetched her myself," he
+remarked casually.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We'll contrive a third seat&mdash;for these little
+emergencies," Keith promised him.  "Till then, the
+privilege must be mine."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark and his mother were in the studio when
+sounds of arrival whisked Helen to her feet.  Her
+natural instinct was to run downstairs and greet
+them: but she was learning to restrain many such
+impulses that Mark might not too acutely feel his
+minor disabilities.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently the door opened and Sheila appeared,
+glowing from her drive, violet-gowned as on the day
+he had seen her last: a bunch of violets in her squirrel
+cap, and distinctly dewy violets in her eyes.  The
+long low room with its restful blue tones and dark oak
+panelling was flooded with March sunlight, fragrant
+with the scent of hyacinths that stood about in bowls:
+and to Mark, the small gallant figure of his first and
+last allegiance seemed in tune with it all, visibly and
+vitally, as Bel had never been.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila, for her part, would have summed up her
+own mixed emotions in the one word "home": the
+home of her spirit and her heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a swift survey of the room, her eyes rested
+smiling on Mark in his wheeled chair by the window.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The quartette complete again, at last, under one
+roof!" she said, a thrill of gladness in her low voice.
+Then the underlying tragedy caught at her heart
+and she took refuge in her Viking.  "<i>He</i> must be
+glad to have you back again.  Hasn't he told you so?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes&mdash;lately he has," Mark answered, looking at
+her, not at the Viking, whom it pleased them to
+regard as a member of the family.  "He was a bit
+reticent at first.  But the gladdest of all was Bobs,
+here.  No blooming reticence about him!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The darling!"  And crouching down Sheila
+stroked the chestnut head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The devoted creature lay close pressed against his
+master's legs, using Mark's feet for a chin-rest; an
+endearing form of caress.  But Mark could not
+feel it any more.  He sometimes wondered&mdash;did the
+others realise?  He hoped they did not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I thought the poor little chap would go crazy,
+the first day," he said.  "Kept flinging himself against
+me with his little shivering squeals, tearing up and
+down the room, sending the rugs to blazes; asking me,
+plain as speech, to get up and play the fool with him.
+Now&mdash;he understands and he's just glued to my chair.
+Won't even go for a walk with Keith.  Yes, old man,
+I'm telling tales of you."  This last to Bobs, who
+glanced upward without shifting his position.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila's eyes were so dewy by this time that she
+had to make the most of Bobs, who wanted to go to
+sleep again and found her attentions rather
+superfluous.  He was a man's dog, first and last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They lunched at the far end of the long room.  It
+was a convenient arrangement for Mark and it
+economised coal.  Every penny that could be saved
+at Wynchcombe Friars went to help Mark's poorest
+cottagers and war-increasing colony of refugees,
+through that first hard winter of war;&mdash;a prelude,
+merely, to the gigantic struggle ahead.  Yet there
+was still a certain amount of loose, comforting talk
+about the worst being over by the autumn.  A good
+deal of it emanated from those who were resolved
+to avert conscription at any price&mdash;to others.
+"Traitors' talk," Mark called it bluntly: and in essence
+it was no less.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lunch was a brief and cheerful meal: Keith for a
+wonder being the principal talker.  He had gleaned
+some inside information, from a wounded officer at
+Winchester, of the dispositions at Neuve Chapelle,
+and he proceeded to demonstrate them, for Mark's
+benefit, with the toast rack, the muffineers, the cake,
+and several apples, blandly ignoring murmurs from
+Helen about "the geography of the table."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The meal ended, he retired to the library and his
+treatise; and Helen went down to interview a refugee
+dressmaker; a forlorn and pathetic creature in whom
+she took a very special interest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll be back soon, my lambs," she said as she went.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a perceptible moment of embarrassment;
+but Sheila swiftly conquered her shyness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't see anything new here yet," she remarked,
+glancing round his sanctuary.  "And you know I'm
+expecting&mdash;great things!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark shook his head.  "I've not touched a bit
+of clay or plasticine since I got back.  But in that
+folio, there's a big rough crayon of a charging
+Highlander on a bit of brown board, if you'd care to make
+his acquaintance."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No need to answer that.  She had him out instantly
+and propped him on an antique table against the
+wall.  Rough he certainly was, but of a vigour and
+vitality that went far to justify her expectation of
+great things.  No artist by temperament, like Bel,
+Sheila could neither appraise nor criticise technically:
+but she had an unerring eye for motive, for the
+underlying spirit of art in all its manifestations.  Certain
+sketches she had seen at Mavins and this barbaric
+figure that sprang yelling from the parapet&mdash;bayonet
+fixed, head back, kilt flying&mdash;told her that Mark's
+idealism had gained rather than lost by contact with
+the uglier, more staggering aspects of life and death.
+And there can be no sharper test of its quality.  Cruel
+things, tragic things, seen and suffered, had drawn his
+Muse closer to earth; had imparted a certain
+ruthlessness both to his manner and matter: but exultingly
+she knew that he belonged, and would unfailingly
+belong, to the great company for whom there is always
+a window that looks to the sky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I saw him&mdash;just like that."  Mark explained
+to her silence.  "Five minutes afterwards a shell
+came our way&mdash;" an expressive gesture filled the
+hiatus.  "And somehow he stuck in my brain."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes&mdash;he would," she said, still dwelling upon him.
+"Why not make a small statue of him?  He is
+simply&mdash;Scotland for ever!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark's eyes were on her face and her low tone
+thrilled through him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He shall be yours&mdash;if I ever get him into clay.
+At present ... that side of things seems dead."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not dead&mdash;but sleeping," she said in her softest
+voice.  "It will all come back&mdash;bigger and more
+splendidly alive&mdash;when you've struck root again in this
+dear deserted place."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sighed.  "Hope you're right.  I'll need it
+more than ever I did, once I'm ... renewed mentally.
+It isn't an altogether painless process.  And I'm
+no stoic&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I expect Mums would tell a different tale," she
+put in gently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mums would glorify me&mdash;from sheer habit!
+Yet it's she who gets the full benefit of my lapses from
+stoicism&mdash;bless her.  It'll be a real service to her if
+you succeed in exorcising the devil!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The light in her eyes was enough to banish all the
+devils in creation&mdash;for the moment, "<i>I</i> don't believe
+in him," she said softly.  "I'm going to concentrate
+on waking up the other thing&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this point Lady Forsyth reappeared with her
+knitting and her <i>National Review</i>.  She knitted for
+her war orphans now that spring had smiled upon the
+sodden trenches "out there."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very fine, isn't it?" she said indicating the
+Highlander, and Sheila nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He's going to be my first own statue: a bronze."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then they arranged Mark's invalid table and set
+a cushion on it.  "There," said his mother shaking
+it up.&mdash;"Bow your head upon your arms and try not
+to feel heart-broken!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Try not to feel a fool would be more like it," he
+grumbled ungratefully.  As a matter of fact he
+found no difficulty in obeying her last injunction.
+But Bobs, who had been taking stock of these mysterious
+doings, had his own private opinion on the subject.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Springing up, paws on the table, he anxiously
+investigated Mark's bowed head and tried to thrust
+a moist loving nose under his forehead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Down, old boy, lie down," Mark muttered; and
+for the minute he obeyed.  But no self-respecting
+dog could submit to see his master so humiliated.
+The call for championship was obvious.  With little
+snarling sounds, he sprang up again, snapped at Sheila's
+hands and nibbled at her ankles half playful, half
+vicious, and wholly determined to rescue his helpless
+owner, till Mark flung up his head and laughed.
+"Officious little beggar!  Turn him out, please,
+Mums."  He glanced at Sheila.  "I won't have you bullied.
+He tried to eat Macgregor and Keith first time he
+saw them handle me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Macgregor&mdash;your sergeant&mdash;&mdash;?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  He's knocked out too, poor chap!  Lost his
+foot, after all.  But he's a sturdy fellow, so I secured
+him for my bodyguard and he was no end pleased."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a very chastened and reproachful Bobs
+who at last suffered himself to be forcibly removed
+from the scene.  Mark patted his head by way of
+explanation: but the rank injustice of the whole
+proceeding must have galled his faithful soul.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now," said Mark the ungrateful, as the door closed
+on his defender.  "Go ahead.  It's not half bad!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In his heart he found in her unerring discovery and
+manipulation of each sensitive nerve little short of
+magic.  But that sort of thing could not be said.
+Since his mother's concern was entirely for himself,
+his own concern must be entirely for Sheila.  His
+will, too long in abeyance, must stand between him
+and the temptation to discover, by imperceptible
+means, whether his defection had killed outright the
+shy response he was just beginning to discern when
+Bel appeared on the scene.  By some means he
+must contrive to keep the lover's note out of their
+intercourse.  He was glad at least that a deeper
+expression of brotherly tenderness had crept into
+his letters from France.  It would make things a
+trifle easier now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This renewal of intimacy would, he perceived, be
+no light ordeal; so closely interwoven were the strands
+of joy and pain.  But it was the price of her sweet
+companionship; and he would pay it willingly, just
+so long as it involved no risk for her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To-day, while her fingers made magical passes
+across his forehead, or fluttered over his head like
+soft, strong wings, he had need to reaffirm his resolve:
+and his best chance of keeping it, though he guessed
+it not, lay less in the strength of his own will than in
+Sheila's simplicity and singleness of heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For nearly an hour he surrendered himself to the
+healing influence of her spirit and her touch, till
+definite thought was stilled and peace flowed through
+him, as in the days when Sœur Colette had kneeled
+and prayed beside his bed....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then it was over; and he was bidden to be quiet
+till tea-time, while his mother and Sheila strolled on
+the terrace in the sun.  Helen tilted back his
+adjustable chair, rearranged his cushion and lightly
+kissed his forehead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Didn't I do well to insist?" she asked smiling;
+and he smiled back at her without a word.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Keith came in for tea; and before it was over,
+Dr. Warburton appeared.  The illusion of old times was
+strong upon them all.  Except for war-talk and
+Mark's wheeled chair, it was almost as if their summer
+and winter of tragic memory had never been.  But
+the fact that Sheila must leave them broke the spell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Till Wednesday," Mark said at parting.  "And
+one of these days I swear I'll kick over the traces and
+come for you myself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To that announcement she had no ready-made
+answer at command.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's lovely to be home again&mdash;and spoilt again,"
+she remarked irrelevantly to whom it might concern.
+"And remember,&mdash;<i>I</i> expect to find something begun
+if it's only a terra-cotta trifle."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+On Wednesday she returned to find the terra-cotta
+trifle awaiting her on his modelling table that had
+stood empty since the outbreak of war.  It was a
+rugged and very vital study of Bobs in a gamesome
+mood; hindquarters in the air, shoulders down,
+head laid sideways between outflung paws and an
+upward glance of appeal from his only visible eye.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beneath him, on the pedestal, Mark had scratched
+the words: "St. Roberts the Blest.  An invitation
+to play the fool!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yours," he said as she stood before it, entranced.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mark!  You don't mean it!"  But she knew very
+well that he did, and her heart sang for joy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Done to order," he explained gravely.  "The
+first fruits of your magic."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At that she took it up between her hands and held
+it for a moment against her cheek.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's a lovesome thing.&mdash;And there'll be bigger
+fruits still in a few weeks' time."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm ... not so sure," he said slowly.  "It was mostly
+my long tramps that brought the big inspirations."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was forcing himself, these days, to speak naturally
+and casually of his tragic disability; but he had
+not yet been so frank with Sheila and she winced in
+spite of herself.  Too well she remembered his boyish
+delight when he persuaded his father to lengthen the
+studio by throwing two rooms into one, and how he
+had declared that merely from the extra space for
+prowling there would spring a masterpiece.  And he
+had always worked standing.  In absence she
+instinctively pictured him on his feet.  Even now&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet, if he could face things and speak of it all like
+this, she must face them too....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I believe when ... genius really comes alive
+again, it will override everything," she said in a
+voice of subdued conviction.  "I'm not just prophesying
+smooth things.  I'm confessing ... the faith
+that is in me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark was silent.  He dared not speak.  He dared
+hardly look at her, lest she read the worship in his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Forsyth, being in no wise hampered, impulsively
+held out her hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Darling, you and I are of one faith," she said:
+and Sheila swept to her and kneeled beside her, glad to
+hide her face a moment against the shoulder of Mark's
+mother.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+After that, she came again and again, and the
+effect on Mark's temper and spirits was obvious to all.
+She was not merely a healing influence, but a source
+of inspiration; an incentive to renewed effort, to a
+more purposeful grip on the far from futile activities
+that still remained to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Inevitably he found himself contrasting the high
+felicity of this girl's companionship with that other
+who had led him hopelessly astray from the path of
+true happiness.  On the one hand a spell, a desire,
+a troubled unsatisfying charm: on the other, a real
+woman's heart,&mdash;gracious, consoling, understanding,
+that rang true to every testing touch, and would, he
+felt convinced, could he test her to the uttermost.
+If, at times, Sheila seemed narrow where Bel was
+diffused, she had the higher merit of being deep
+where Bel was shallow.  While there was scarcely a
+surface in life or art that Bel had not skimmed, she
+had penetrated nowhere.  Sheila&mdash;ignorant of much
+that the modern girl deems essential to her equipment
+for life&mdash;was yet profoundly versed in the eternal
+lore of the heart.  Bel could never let a man forget
+he was primarily a man and she primarily a woman:
+whereas, some finer quality in Sheila enabled Mark
+to rest content&mdash;almost&mdash;with the enchantment of
+her voice, her eyes and the fellowship of her spirit.
+For all that, there were moments when he wondered
+how much longer he could keep it up&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And again Sheila, though he did not guess it,
+was his best safeguard.  She had come, simply and
+gladly, without after-thought, convinced that she could
+heal his hurt spirit, though his body was beyond her
+help.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the moment, it sufficed that she was privileged
+through her own gift of healing, to revive his greater
+gift of creation: and to that end she marshalled all
+the forces of her still, strong nature.  Self-dedicated
+to his service, the unspoken prayer of her spirit was
+the prayer of Theodolind, the mystic: "Give me
+wings of great desire, lest I look within and fail."  And
+gradually, unconsciously, she imparted something
+of her exalted mood to Mark.  A growing conviction
+that this blessed state of things involved no danger
+to her, gave him fresh courage to control his own
+emotion lest he lose the best he had any right to ask
+of her now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So, for awhile, things went well at Wynchcombe
+Friars: and for Lady Forsyth those last two weeks
+of March were the happiest, the most hopeful, she
+had known since Mark's return from France.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had reverted, by now, to his old keen interest
+in the management of his property; and began to enjoy
+driving with Russell through his woods and
+farmlands, and supervising his handicrafts colony, chiefly
+given over to French and Flemish refugees.  Since
+no son of his would ever reign at Wynchcombe Friars,
+he was the more zealous to do his utmost&mdash;while
+time and opportunity were given him&mdash;for the people
+and the land he loved.  In this way he grew to be
+aware that his tenants and workers regarded him
+with a new and peculiar devotion, often touchingly
+exhibited, inexpressive creatures though they were by
+heritage and habit.  He was even persuaded to put
+in an appearance at a big recruiting demonstration at
+Winchester, where he called upon Jevons, the bootmaker,
+to the old man's huge delight.  He read voraciously
+and played chess with his mother; though in their case,
+it was apt to become a prolonged argument rather
+than a game.  He also started a bust of Keith, who
+quarrelled with his undiscerning choice of a subject
+and in secret was mightily pleased at the compliment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark did not fail to note his mother's eager interest
+in this new venture: or the pains she was at not to let it
+be suspected.  It set him wondering what on earth
+the dear good fellow was up to&mdash;he that was free to
+go in and win the woman of his heart.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+March departed lamblike; and April came in with
+primroses and violets and dappled skies; with coral
+buds on the wild almond at the end of the terrace, and
+the gleam of young leaves on black boughs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+April was Mark's own month and for him there
+was none like it in all the year.  He too felt the leap
+of new life and hope within him: and Sheila began to
+talk of getting leave for her promised visit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, before her dream came true, that stir of new
+life, within and without, precipitated a crisis&mdash;almost
+inevitable between unavowed lovers, using
+the language of friendship and thinking the thoughts
+of love.  It came precisely when and precisely
+because increasing confidence and intimacy had thrown
+them a little off their guard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Upon the afternoon of Sheila's seventh visit they
+were left practically alone.  Keith had driven Lady
+Forsyth over to Bramleigh Beeches to meet a
+distinguished Indian poetess, who had expressed
+admiration of Helen's small volume of French and
+Belgian War poems.  These she had translated during
+the winter to keep her mind from brooding on Mark
+and to raise extra money for their refugees.  Helen
+was eager to meet the little lady who had written so
+charmingly about her work; and they left early that
+Keith might be back in time to drive Sheila home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark's elation should have warned him that there
+was peculiar need for caution and control.  But the
+wine of spring sparkled in his veins.  The air was full
+of love-songs and Te Deums.  Daffodil buds were
+breaking and the first butterflies were out.  All the
+morning he had been scouring the country with
+Keith in the little car that was now the joy of his life:
+and an afternoon alone with Sheila fittingly crowned
+his content.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When massage was over, he voted for tea at the
+south-west corner of the terrace where they would
+secure the last of the sun.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A Japanese tea-party," said Sheila, "to worship
+the almond blossom!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark privately added another object of worship,
+no less emblematic of spring.  For Sheila, happy in
+her devotion and in her power of healing, was emerging
+from the shadow of her double loss; shyly watching,
+at last, the dawning of her secret hope.  Her eyes
+and skin were clearer, her cheeks less pale, her beauty
+and her spirit seemed visibly to blossom with the
+blossoming year.  Her delight in the day and the
+occasion was no less than Mark's, but it was of a
+stiller quality.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They carried him down to the terrace, chair and
+all; and there, established in the sunny corner, watched
+over by the almond tree, she made tea for him and
+told stories of her other patients, whom she was
+neglecting a little these days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+More by instinct than design, they kept their talk
+in a lighter vein than usual; and Bobs, as gay as either
+of them, proved very serviceable in this respect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly there flashed on Mark a memory of that
+other picnic on the shore of Loch Etive: the
+love-making, the conscious coquetry; the first intimation
+of underlying rocks that would have wrecked
+their ship of marriage.  Summarily he dismissed the
+intrusive reminder, that made him angry with himself,
+angrier still with Bel and her shallow witchery.  Yet
+the indelible shadow of what had been lay right across
+his path.  Painfully he was learning that "the whole
+life is mixed; the mocking Past will stay."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But this afternoon he would have none of it&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hester had come out to remove the tea-things and
+she brought a letter for Mark from Colonel Munro.
+When he looked up from reading it, Sheila sat lost
+in thought, one elbow on the empty tea-table, looking
+away across the valley, where a gap in the pine woods
+revealed a glimpse of blue distance clear against the
+evening sky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a space he watched her, till he dared watch
+no longer.  Then: "Mouse," he said very quietly,
+"what are you brooding on so deeply?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she answered him, as quietly, in one word.  "Ralph."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her tone in speaking of that very ordinary, very
+brave and beloved brother gave Mark always a sense
+of standing on sacred ground.  He said nothing; and
+after a pause she sighed and sat upright in her low
+straightbacked chair resting her arms on the table, her
+hands loosely clasped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the middle finger of her left hand she wore a
+curious, antique ring; a Christmas present from her
+absentee father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A day like this is double-edged, isn't it?  It
+seems to stir all the deeps&mdash;joy and pain.  He
+was such a dear simple thing.  So close to earth,
+loving it all so.  And yet&mdash;the other was what
+he wished.  Just when you spoke I was thinking of
+that wonderful Roumanian ballad, the dead soldier
+who was content: the last lines&mdash;you know, when he
+asks the passers-by are they remembering him?
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  '"Not so, my hero," the lovers said,<br>
+  "We are those who remember not.<br>
+  For the Spring has come and the Earth has smiled<br>
+  And the dead must be forgot."<br>
+  And the soldier spake from the deep dark grave&mdash;<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"I am content!"'"<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+At the last, her voice shook so that there was a
+moment of silence before she added: "I believe
+that's what most of them would say&mdash;our 'noble army
+of martyrs'&mdash;if only we could hear&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes: most of them," Mark answered slowly, with
+quiet conviction.  "And on the whole, I'm not sure
+... they haven't the best of it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned quickly and met his direct gaze.  "You
+mustn't say that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't&mdash;to the others.  But I feel it&mdash;pretty
+acutely ... sometimes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not so often&mdash;now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a statement rather than a question.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not nearly so often.  That's your doing."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her deep blush so startled him that he promptly
+took refuge in generalities:&mdash;the effect of the war on
+character, national and individual: which tendency
+would prevail on the whole, the spiritual exaltation of
+a high purpose and tragedy nobly borne; or demoralisation
+from sheer horror and strain?  Maurice Lenox,
+for instance, how would he and his type eventually
+emerge from the war?  And even where there had
+been a genuine uplift, would it last?  Or, would the
+pendulum swing back farther than ever, if the struggle
+dragged endlessly, sullenly on?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila admitted reluctantly that the pendulum had
+to be reckoned with.  She was thinking of Seldon
+and of Bel: and some hidden channel of communion
+conveyed her thought to Mark.  He had heard of
+Seldon from Ralph at Inveraig and again, lately, from
+his mother.  But he had no idea how far things had
+ever gone between them and he very much wanted to
+know.  He had no business whatever to be jealous
+of the man; but he was fiercely jealous, none the
+less.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How about that particular friend of yours,
+Seldon?" he asked casually.  "Mums told me you had
+him here.  Quite regenerate.  All your
+achievement&mdash;what d'you think?  Will it last?"'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She started and looked up.  "How odd you should
+speak of him.  He was in my mind."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Why</i> was he in your mind?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jealousy flashed out in spite of him: and she smiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Isn't he allowed to be?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm not sure.  Depends how he's going to behave
+himself!"  The chaffing tone was deliberately
+assumed.  "As a patient&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, he's not my patient any more," she put in
+quickly.  "But I'm bothered about him all the same."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why?  <i>Isn't</i> it going to last?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He'll go out again.  At least, I believe he will,"
+she answered evasively.  "Motor transport, he says.
+He can't do despatch riding any more."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Still writes to you, does he?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not very often&mdash;now."  She paused; longing to
+tell him everything; yet doubtful, still, whether any
+shred of feeling remained for Bel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And ... he doesn't want to marry you?"
+Mark asked irrelevantly.  He simply had to know.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He did.  That was the beginning of it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of what?&mdash;The drink?  Because you wouldn't
+have him?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mark&mdash;that's an insult!"  But it was useless
+pretending to be angry.  The discovery that he could
+be jealous, even half in joke, sent her spirits up with a
+run.  "Someone else was responsible for that, thank
+goodness.  And unluckily, he's come across her again.
+I'm not at all happy about it; and I don't think he is
+either."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Wrong sort, is she?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"M-yes.  I don't believe she wants him.  Yet&mdash;she's
+holding him in spite of himself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Poor devil!"  Mark was quite ready now to extend
+the hand of sympathy.  "<i>I</i> know&mdash;all about that."  He
+spoke slowly and with emphasis.  He had
+decided, on the spur of the moment, to break through
+his misleading silence about Bel; to explain frankly
+the process and the completeness of his disenchantment.
+She must know.  She had the right to know:
+she, whom he had so cavalierly deserted, after their
+names had been coupled by relatives and friends.
+Though power to make reparation was denied him,
+he felt imperatively that she must know.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So, after a pause, he went on, with the same slow
+emphasis: "You see&mdash;perhaps you did see&mdash;Miss
+Alison was that sort."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The formal name, so casually spoken, sounded
+very strange on his lips; and her heart, that was now
+in a troublesome state of commotion, rejoiced to hear
+it.  "Yes: I did see&mdash;afterwards," she said in her
+quietest voice.  "Not at first."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nor did I&mdash;at first.  In fact, not clearly, till I
+got out to France.  Machine-guns and high explosives
+play havoc with more than the landscape and
+the human envelope.  They smash up unrealities
+and readjust all the values.  Oh yes, out there one
+saw things clear&mdash;horrid clear.  Her letters too..." he
+paused.  "And all those weeks, when
+... I was dead, when I seemed to have no real link
+with anything, any one but that devoted little nun.
+Her saintliness, her simplicity ... made things
+clearer than ever.  I saw&mdash;" he paused, looking down
+into the heart of the wood; tempted beyond measure
+to defy Fate and iron decrees and tell her all he had
+seen in those strange days, when his lips were closed
+and his eyes were dazzlingly opened to the truth.
+The one thing he did not see at that moment, fortunately
+perhaps, was Sheila's face, bright with the dawn
+of realisation, of an almost incredible hope.  "I saw,"
+he repeated in a low, impersonal tone, as if talking to
+himself, "how rootless our whole relation was and
+always had been.  She never reached the depths.
+Didn't want to.  She had no earthly use for them.  Her
+effect on me was an artificial stimulus all along.  Mind,
+I'm not excusing myself.  It's no credit to me that
+she could and did take such a hold.  And I came very
+near marrying her before I went out.  Makes me
+shiver now to think of it: for her sake as much as my
+own.  Dangerous things, these war marriages.  I've
+heard of some painful cases.&mdash;Then, when I came back,
+there she was&mdash;irresistible as ever.  But the something
+in me that couldn't resist her had been burnt away&mdash;out
+there.  Then they told me I was a permanent
+crock....  No choice&mdash;after that.  Marrying days
+were over."  A pause.  "Perhaps, after all, it's
+worth being smashed up, like this, to save one's soul
+alive.  There&mdash;now you know.  I've been wanting
+to tell you ... all that this long while."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And I've been badly ... wanting to know," she
+admitted very softly; but his quick ear caught a new
+vibration in her voice.  Startled out of his passing
+relief, he turned swiftly and was confronted by a
+transfigured Sheila, gifts in her eyes, the colour rising
+in her cheeks.  For her there was no iron decree.
+Heart and soul she was ready.  And Mark, for one
+measureless moment, sat there tongue-tied, realising
+what he had done, realising still more acutely what he
+dared not do....  With a supreme effort he forced
+himself to look away from her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I was <i>right</i> when I said ... just now ... the
+dead have the best of it," he muttered in a tone of
+concentrated bitterness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila sat silent, motionless.  It was as if with one
+hand he had lifted her to heaven and with the other
+had flung her back into the dust&mdash;Her eyes were
+blinded so that she could not see the pain in his face:
+and suddenly her ears caught the purr of the motor
+coming down the drive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah&mdash;there they are!"  It was Mark who spoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila heard the note of relief in his voice and it
+cut her to the heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Without a word she rose and went to meet them&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0404"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER IV
+</h3>
+
+<p class="intro2">
+  "A seed of fire is in the human soul<br>
+  That tears can quench not...."<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;F. W. B.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Helen, herself, had seen at a glance that something
+was wrong: very wrong indeed.  When the two were
+gone, she returned to Mark with a flutter of trepidation
+at her heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila cared.  By this time she was convinced of it.
+And Mark?  Once already, in his blindness, he had
+flung aside this jewel of a girl.  Did he mean to do it
+a second time open-eyed, because his body had suffered
+shipwreck in the service of his country?  If he had got
+that resolve in his brain, she foreknew the futility of
+argument.  Yet&mdash;given the chance and the facts&mdash;she
+was prepared to fight it out with him, for Sheila's
+sake no less than his own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it was for him to speak first; and she feared his
+silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During her absence he had wheeled himself along
+the terrace and back again to that fatal corner, where a
+ghostly Sheila still sat in the empty chair, her arms
+resting on the table, a light of unearthly beauty in her
+eyes.  His face wore the hard closed-up look that his
+mother had not seen for weeks.  Casual talk about
+Bramleigh Beeches was sheerly impossible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My darling, what <i>has</i> gone wrong?" she made bold
+to ask.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He frowned and set his teeth.  "Everything.  Too
+perfect to last.  I might have known it."  He looked
+about him uneasily.  "We can't talk out here.  Let's
+get indoors."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They proceeded to get indoors accordingly; and
+there by the freshly crackling drawing-room fire it
+was possible to talk.  Mark lit a cigarette to steady
+himself.  Lady Forsyth sat in her favourite small
+chair, warming her hands, that always went cold under
+stress of emotion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mark, did you speak to her?" she asked quietly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I came within an ace of it&mdash;God forgive me!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Those three words confirmed her worst fears.  But
+she could say nothing yet.  Her heart was beating
+fast.  It was a distressing symptom, greatly increased
+by months of anxiety and the ceaseless strain of the
+war.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So she remained silent, awaiting further revelations.
+And after a pause Mark went on:&mdash;"I deserve a
+thorough good kicking.  Wish I'd a father to give it
+me.  Perhaps Keith will.  I'm not blaming you,
+Mums.  This massage business has done me no end
+of good.  But in every other respect it's been the very
+devil.  As for <i>her</i>&mdash;she's the most perfect thing God
+ever made.  And I'm afraid ... I'm horribly afraid
+... she cares.  The look in her eyes dumbfounded
+me.  There was no choice between a clean cut
+... and surrender...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And why <i>not</i> surrender?" his mother ventured,
+fearful yet undaunted.  "Honestly I believe&mdash;it
+would be better and happier for us all."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At that the stifled flame in him leaped out even as
+she had feared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Better for <i>me</i> ... for you.  That's the extent
+of your honest belief.  Mums, you're not facing this
+business straight: though you think you are.  You're
+just a dear devoted mother-woman.  Whatever your
+son cries for, from a Noah's ark to a wife, you'll move
+heaven and earth to get it for him at any cost&mdash;to any
+one.  And I love you for it.  But you can't expect me,
+always, to see it the same way.  I'm considering
+Sheila and no one but Sheila&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My dear boy, <i>I'm</i> considering her too!" his mother
+cried out, unable to endure that last reproach.  "I've
+been doing so a good deal longer than you have; and,
+believe it or not, my understanding of her goes deeper
+than yours.  I'm a woman.  She's a woman&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>There</i> you are!"  Mark fairly took the word out
+of her mouth.  "It's because she's so divinely a woman
+that I refuse to let her in for ... a travesty of a
+marriage.  A girl like that was created for better things
+than dancing attendance on a broken man.  It would
+be a sin.  You know that as well as I do."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was silent a moment, recognising that he spoke
+the truth: one side of it.  But even while she loved
+and honoured him for his refusal, conviction remained
+that Sheila, if she really cared, would recognise no
+obstacles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But, dear, after all, things aren't quite past
+mending," she urged in a quieter tone.  "Surely Sheila
+has the right to know you love her, and to make her
+own choice."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark shook his head.  "She wouldn't think things
+out.  And she'd be too tender-hearted to refuse.&mdash;As
+for me, there probably will be improvement, of sorts.
+But, so far as I can see, the chances are I'll never be a
+whole man again: and I don't see myself marrying
+Sheila, on the off chance&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh&mdash;you're hopeless!  And <i>she's</i> helpless, poor
+darling!  Why must we wretched women always be
+dumb on this matter that concerns us above everything
+else?  She ought to be allowed to take the initiative
+in a case like this."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Just as well for me that she isn't," Mark muttered
+grimly.  But she detected in his voice the mere ghost
+of a vibration, and a wild hope leaped in her heart.
+Sheila might move him, or Keith&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this point Mark leaned forward suddenly and
+flung away his cigarette.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't let's talk of this again, Mums," he said,
+more gently than he had spoken yet.  "It hurts us
+both too much.  Also it's futile.  Nothing on earth
+would induce me to offer Sheila&mdash;damaged goods:
+damaged in every sense.  I'm the sinner first and last.
+When I ought to have been at her feet, I was wasting
+my substance on ... Miss Alison.  Oh yes ... you
+knew ... you're welcome to your private triumph.'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My son&mdash;it's no triumph," she broke out bitterly.
+"It's torment.  I would sooner have been entirely
+wrong and that Bel should have turned out worthy of
+your chivalrous love&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, <i>I</i> wouldn't," he contradicted her inevitably.
+"I wouldn't sooner anything that might have robbed
+me of discovering Sheila as I've been discovering her
+these few weeks; even though it's made things in
+general ten times harder to bear.  She's a perpetual
+inspiration.  A light of earth.  If she were only that&mdash;!
+But she's more.  And so ... she's not for me.
+Possibly I was mistaken this afternoon.  It might
+have been ... just her heavenly sympathy.  I hope
+to God it was!  We'll run no more risks, anyway.
+If she gets this leave of hers, I'd better go off on some
+sort of tour with Keith:&mdash;doctor's orders!  If he's too
+busy, the Sinclairs might put up with me for a bit, or
+Uncle John down at Weymouth.  The farther the
+better.  We must furbish up some sort of presentable
+excuse.  It's pretty detestable, just when things in
+general seemed to be taking a real lift all round."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And his mother sat listening to it all, mute and
+miserable, envisaging the spring and summer&mdash;that
+had seemed to promise resurrection&mdash;darkened by
+this fresh tragedy.  She knew, now, just how high
+hope had risen of late.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And is this sort of thing ... to be permanent?"
+she asked, with a sigh of utter weariness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned and regarded her reproachfully, the
+faintest flicker of humour in his grave eyes. "My dear
+Mums, I sometimes wonder if you really have walked
+this earth for fifty years!  Is anything ever
+permanent&mdash;except change?  I suppose ... we shall both
+shake down in time and accept the horrid fact.  But
+at present, as things stand, the less she sees of me the
+better.  She ought&mdash;to marry.  And she probably
+will.  Oh <i>God</i>!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The last words were no more than a fierce whisper,
+and his hand closed sharply on the arm of his chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His mother neither moved nor spoke.  She leaned
+forward over the fire, her face half turned away from
+him, thankful the lights were not switched on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But although no sob escaped her, Mark knew very
+well that she was crying.  In other circumstances he
+would have been on his knees beside her.  As it was,
+he sat there dumb; chained to the accursed chair, raging
+at his helplessness; raging still more at his very
+belated readiness to fulfil her heart's desire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Soon she rose hurriedly, murmured something about
+coming back soon, and left him....
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+They were alone that evening.  Keith was dining at
+Wynchmere and speaking afterwards at the Working
+Man's Club on ambulance driving in France.  They
+missed him badly, both of them.  It is often the way
+with such quiet, unobtrusive natures.  Keith and
+Sheila were alike in that respect: and all through
+dinner, both were vividly present to the minds of
+mother and son.  But their talk in the main was of
+Bramleigh Beeches, Indian genius, and the poetry of
+Tagore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After dinner Mark asked for <i>Sadhana</i> and music.
+He wanted to escape from talk that could not, just
+then, be anything but a mere makeshift between them:
+a state of things unnatural and intolerable to both.
+While his mother played Grieg and Beethoven, he
+opened his book haphazard at the poet's exquisite
+clear-eyed discourse on "Realisation in Love."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Our individual soul," he read, "has been separated
+from the Supreme Soul not from alienation, but
+from fulness of love.  It is for this reason that
+untruths, sufferings, and evil are not at a standstill:
+the human soul can defy them, can overcome them;
+nay, can altogether transform them into new power
+and beauty...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark pondered that sentence a long while.  It was
+like a light flashed upon the dark path before him; like
+the voice of God in his own soul, saying, "This do and
+thou shalt live."  His faith in the Unseen was, like
+that of most Britons, an inarticulate and very hidden
+thing.  But his brief, strenuous spell of service,
+followed by weeks of intimate, yet unspoken
+communion with the passionate soul of one small French
+nun, had intensified his inner vision and deepened
+the measure of faith that was in him.  To-night he
+recognised and accepted the task assigned him;
+recognised also that, just in so far as he fulfilled it, he
+would be still able to serve his country and his own
+people, in defiance of his handicap.  The struggle
+between spirit and matter, that had hitherto been the
+keynote of his art, must now become the keynote of his
+life....  "Unconquering, yet unconquered...."  Stevenson
+knew.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet still his desolate, rebellious heart cried out that
+<i>with Sheila</i> any achievement were possible: without
+her the future loomed dark and formless, a night
+devoid of stars....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Punctually at ten he asked to be taken up to bed.
+When he was gone, the house felt so silent and empty
+that Helen fled for refuge to her own room and her own
+fire.  Anxious and disheartened by this fresh trouble,
+she clung to the thought of Keith as a shipwrecked
+man to a spar.  Her own pleading was vitiated&mdash;no
+denying it&mdash;by the mere fact of her motherhood.
+Keith could speak more impartially, more frankly, as
+one man to another.  She wanted to see him, and
+unburden her heart to him before she slept.  But he
+expected to be late and had begged her not to sit up.
+Besides, he would be tired and it would not be fair on
+him.  She must have patience till the morning.  Her
+rebel spirit was being drilled into patience these days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The door into Mark's room was shut.  It most
+often had to be, now.  But she heard no sound of
+footsteps.  The men had evidently left him.  Should
+she go in and say good night?  Her heart yearned
+over him; and it was hateful to feel unsure of her
+welcome.  Did he guess how acutely she missed his casual
+wanderings in and out; the arguments, the "ragging,"
+and the dear delights of their ancient comradeship,
+that almost seemed to belong to another life?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Latterly, under Sheila's reviving influence, the old
+happy relation had been renewed with a difference.
+It was she who now went in to him for early tea,
+when he did not peremptorily order her back lest she
+catch cold; and the "hair-brush interview" often
+took place beside his bed.  Being dependent on the
+men, he could not sit up till all hours.  Now,
+to-day&mdash;just as hope was sending green shoots into the
+sunshine&mdash;she felt jerked back into the miseries and
+uncertainties of a winter that she would fain wipe
+clean out of her memory.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Finally, she decided to go in to him and chance the
+result.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The comfort of finding she was welcome would be
+worth the risk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His room was in darkness: curtains drawn back,
+windows flung open, revealing a strip of starry sky
+and black pine branches blotting out a constellation
+or two.  The light from her own room guided her
+to his bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He said not a word.  But his arms came out to greet
+her; and he drew her down, clinging to her, as he had
+never done in the days before War had crippled his
+strong, shapely body and shaken his nerves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I thought&mdash;you had forgotten," he said at last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And <i>I</i> thought perhaps&mdash;you would rather not."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He tightened his hold.  "I forbid you to think that,
+ever.  No matter what the devil inside me may say
+or do.  A nice sort of curse I am to you, little Mums."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You're the dearest blessing of my life," she
+answered, her cheek against his.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was some time before he let her go: but neither
+of them spoke the word uppermost in their minds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She left him at last, with his fervent "God bless
+you" in her ears and hope renewed in her heart.
+Sheila&mdash;if she loved him sufficiently&mdash;must win in the
+end.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0405"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER V
+</h3>
+
+<p class="intro">
+"Yea, there shall be a time that shall lay hold on a man unaware
+and shall give him one thing beyond his hope."&mdash;PINDAR.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+She woke late, after a restless night, to find letters
+already on her tray and the housemaid at her washing-stand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In her room, as in Mark's, there was never any need
+for drawing back curtains or opening windows to let in
+the morning.  Winter and summer she performed
+both offices herself before going to sleep.  For her,
+boxed-up bedrooms, stuffily curtained, were anathema.
+Nature's night was a thing of brooding beauty;
+and the stars were her friends.  If she woke in the
+small hours, a frequent event, she liked to find them
+looking in on her, to see them glimmering like Christmas
+candles through the blackness of her sentinel pines.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now the birds were making music in their branches,
+and the stars had long since been blown out by the sun.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Has Sir Mark had his tea?" she asked, as the maid
+went out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, my lady: he's still asleep."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Tell Macgregor not to disturb him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That meant&mdash;a bad night: for he was an early waker.
+And, for all her devotion, she could do practically
+nothing to ease his misery.  It is one of the hardest
+though perhaps not the least salutary laws of life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She lit her spirit lamp and took up her letters.  One
+of them was from Mrs. Melrose: an unusual event.
+In spite of the link between their children, and the
+natural inference that some day Sheila would marry
+Mark, these two were not friends.  They were merely
+life-long acquaintances.  But Mrs. Melrose, like many
+of her kind, could slip on the cloak of friendship when
+it happened to serve her purpose.  And it served her
+purpose now.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+"My dear Lady Forsyth," she wrote&mdash;"I've been
+feeling rather concerned lately about our Sheila
+and her future prospects.  I say 'our,' because, by
+her own choice, she seems to belong almost as much to
+you as to her father and me.  But&mdash;after all&mdash;she is
+mine.  I am responsible for her welfare.  And as we
+are such very old friends, I am going to write to you
+quite frankly on the subject of her possible marriage.
+Of course I know how you discourage gossip in every
+shape and form, but you are, no doubt, aware that for
+a long time Sheila's name was coupled with Mark's
+all over the neighbourhood.  Quite natural&mdash;you must
+admit.  And if Mark had not suddenly gone off at a
+tangent in another direction, I wouldn't have given
+the matter a thought.  I am far too busy to worry over
+trifles."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+("Too busy to win your daughter's confidence or
+her heart!" was Helen's mental interjection.)
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+"But even in these casual days, it does not
+improve a girl's chances if her name is bandied about,
+coupled with this man and that.  Last autumn there
+was that Mr. Seldon.  Now I hear <i>he</i> is running after
+Miss Alison.  She seems a dangerous young woman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But what chiefly worries me is this.  I discovered
+the other day that people round here are again
+speculating about Sheila and Mark.  And I am sure, dear
+Lady Forsyth, you will agree with me that this won't
+do at all.  Mind, I am not saying a word against
+Mark.  But I do think that, for Sheila's sake, he should
+be careful not to set people talking again in that way,
+as he would not, I feel sure, think of asking her to
+marry him, now.  To be quite frank, neither her father
+nor I would wish it.  And I feel sure you would not
+wish it either&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+At this point Helen flushed furiously.  Those velvety
+phrases barely concealed the direct hit at herself:
+but the next few sentences so startled her that she
+almost forgot to be angry.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+"Personally, in strict confidence, I am convinced
+that Mr. Macnair is seriously <i>épris</i> with our little girl.
+Surely you must have noticed it yourself?  And
+nothing would delight me more.  He is clever, charming,
+eligible in every way.  I thought of it first when
+he began teaching her to drive.  And it has been very
+marked since his return from France.  I have said
+nothing yet, to Sheila herself.  She is difficult about
+such things; so shut in.  Her Melrose grandmother
+all over.  And Mr. Macnair is so modest.  The sort of
+man who needs a certain amount of <i>discreet</i> encouragement.
+But darling Sheila is rather a little fool in that
+way.  I've told her more than once her pride will be
+her ruin!  Now she talks about spending her leave at
+Wynchcombe Friars.  This would be <i>such</i> a good
+chance to complete matters and put an end to all this
+gossip, that I hope I am not presuming on our friendship,
+if I ask you to give them both a <i>little</i> push in the
+right direction&mdash;quite unobtrusively, as only an older
+woman can.  It's all they need, dear foolish creatures,
+and I may add you would earn my eternal gratitude.
+Forgive me if I have written too frankly.  But being
+a mother yourself, I am <i>sure</i> you will understand.  So
+glad to hear from Sheila that Mark is really better in
+every way.
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+  "Yours most sincerely,<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"ADELA MELROSE.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+It is hardly too much to say that before Helen
+Forsyth reached the end of that amazing burst of
+confidence, she had a sudden dizzying sensation of
+seeing the world, her familiar home-world, the wrong
+side up.  Keith and Sheila&mdash;whom she had always
+regarded as belonging respectively to herself and
+Mark!  And she&mdash;with her tragic knowledge of her
+son's belated awakening&mdash;was to give those two the
+"little push" that would send them into each other's
+arms!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once or twice, at Boulogne, she remembered, this
+very idea had dimly occurred to her.  But now&mdash;coming
+from Mrs. Melrose of all people&mdash;she found it
+intolerable.  She resented it vehemently; and not on
+Mark's account alone.  Yet the disconcerting fact
+remained that Keith might hold other views on the
+subject.  She had always been sceptical over Mark's
+nonsense about herself.  At least&mdash;until this
+bewildering moment&mdash;she had honestly believed in her own
+scepticism.  She had put the idea away from her and
+thanked God for the treasure of Keith's devoted
+friendship.  But this morning she perceived, for the
+first time, that she was not at all prepared for his
+falling in love elsewhere.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Was she fundamentally given to self-deception,
+without knowing it&mdash;she who set such store by sincerity
+of soul?  Only last night Mark had turned another of
+her "honest beliefs" inside out.  What would he say to
+this?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Sheila herself?  Incredible!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Distracted by conflicting emotions and utterly
+perplexed, she leaned back among her pillows.  There
+could be no peace, on her own account or Mark's,
+till she had got at the truth.  But&mdash;a gleam of
+humour flashed through her dismay&mdash;how was it to be
+done?  Wire to Sheila: "Are you in love with Keith?"?
+Ask Keith over his coffee and newspaper: "Are you in
+love with Sheila?"?  Confront each with the other on
+Wednesday, and say point-blank: "Look here, if you
+two want to marry, Mark and I have no objections to
+make"?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Perhaps they were hesitating on that score.  It
+would be just like them.  And as to Keith, there was
+no denying that Mrs. Melrose had a case.  He had
+never disguised his admiration for Sheila.  Words and
+incidents, unnoticed at the time, came crowding back
+to her memory&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was mainly to Sheila that Helen looked for
+reprieve, especially after last night.  Yet, if she went to
+Mark now, with this Melrose fantasy, he would
+simply say: "What did I tell you?  The real mother
+has a natural eye to Sheila's real interests.  If there's
+a ghost of a chance for Keith, let the whole man win
+her if he can."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes.  Mark would say that: and he would be right.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of a sudden, she felt heartily ashamed of herself.
+What was it she had said to Sheila at Inveraig?&mdash;"Be
+as kind as you please to your poor things so long
+as you stop short of marrying them."  Yet when it
+came to her own son, she was ready to eat her counsel
+without compunction.  But then&mdash;Mark was Mark.
+And if Sheila loved him&mdash;if she preferred mothering
+her one disabled hero&mdash;&mdash;?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If&mdash;if!  She was simply back again at her argument
+of last night.  Till she knew the facts, speculation was
+futile.  And until she did know, she would certainly
+say nothing to Mark.  Keith, as usual, was her city of
+refuge.  After breakfast she would get him away
+alone and tell him everything.  If necessary, she
+would even show him that detestable letter.....
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+At breakfast in the study they talked war news and
+Government delays and the Great Offensive, that
+appeared to have been slain either by bad Staff work,
+or by lack of ammunition and shells.  And while
+they talked, Helen was surreptitiously watching
+Keith's lean, thoughtful face, with awakened eyes;
+listening to the even quiet of his voice with new ears.
+And all the time she was telling herself sternly that
+perhaps this very Keith, her own peculiar property,
+was in love with Sheila.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When at last he went down to the library, she
+followed him at a casual distance.  He had just grasped
+the door-handle when she reached the last of the stairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Keith," she called; and he turned quickly.  "I've
+had a letter that puzzles me rather.  Can you spare
+me a few minutes?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The whole morning if you like."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was no fervour in his tone.  He simply stated
+an obvious fact.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, come out on the terrace and bask in this
+lovely day.  When the sun is kind enough to take
+notice of England we ought to give him every encouragement!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She talked on rather rapidly for the sake of saying
+something and keeping nervousness at bay.  She had
+a deep respect for the reserves of her men-folk: and
+now, too late, she shrank from laying a finger on the
+curtain that hid the real Keith from her.  Outside
+on the terrace she fell silent till they reached the far
+corner, where Mark and Sheila had parted so abruptly
+the day before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well&mdash;what about your letter?" he asked, an
+amused note in his voice.  It was so like Helen to ask
+for an urgent few minutes and then talk about April
+sunshine.  It was the sort of thing that made her at
+once so aggravating and so lovable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No escape now; and she plunged headlong.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's from Mrs. Melrose.  She has an idea ...
+she says ... you and Sheila...."  Quite useless.
+She could get no further.  "I think," she added,
+handing him that innocuous-looking bombshell, "you'd
+better read it for yourself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mystified by her manner and mildly curious, he
+obeyed: and she, feeling uncomfortably shaky, half
+sat on the edge of the stone balustrade, watching his
+face for some sign of confirmation or reprieve.  She
+saw his eyebrows go up, then draw together in a
+sharp frown.  Then there leaped a flame in his grey
+eyes such as she had seen once or twice at Boulogne
+when he came into collision with immobile Authority.
+Finally she saw a dull flush creep into his face:&mdash;anger
+or emotion?  It was hard to tell.  The curtain was
+not lifted&mdash;yet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Quite suddenly, he looked up and caught her eyes on him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Has the woman taken leave of her senses?" he
+asked, in a dazed voice.  "Sheer insolence&mdash;all that
+twaddle about Mark.  As for the rest&mdash;"  He
+paused, and his flush deepened.  "Sheila and I are
+quite capable of managing our own affairs without her
+inspired assistance."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Precisely what I thought," Helen murmured.
+That "Sheila and I" produced a horrid sinking at her
+heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>You</i>?  What have you been thinking?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A good deal ... since I read that letter."  And
+the pang she had no business to feel gave her
+courage to go on: "Keith, if it's true ... what
+Mrs. Melrose says, I want to say ... on my own account,
+that you need have no hesitation in this matter,
+because of Mark.  He ... he only spoke of it
+yesterday.  He feels ... he has no right.  I confess
+I had hoped&mdash;but ... we both care so immensely
+for you two...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That you are graciously willing to fling us at each
+other's heads," Keith broke out angrily, "at the
+instigation of this impertinent woman.  Upon my
+word, Helen, I stand confounded&mdash;&mdash;!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She also stood confounded.  Anger from Keith was
+more than she had bargained for: and she was further
+inconvenienced by an ignominious impulse to weep.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This gave Keith a distinct advantage: and he went
+on speaking with the same phenomenal vehemence.  "I
+gave you credit for a better understanding of us both.
+Sheila and I, let me tell you, know our own minds very
+thoroughly, and have done so for years.  You say
+Mark spoke of this yesterday?  I'll warrant <i>he</i> never
+coupled Sheila's name with mine."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No.  He was speaking of himself.  He feels ... it
+isn't fair on her...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A good deal fairer, in my opinion, than sending her
+home crumpled up as she was last night.  Something
+happened, while we were out, that broke her all to
+pieces.  Obviously, from the way you are both behaving,
+neither of you have a glimmering notion of what
+that girl feels for Mark.  It's my belief that, through
+long repression, her love has reached a height of almost
+sacrificial devotion; and that's not the sort of thing a
+man can afford to fling aside for a scruple&mdash;even an
+honourable scruple."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Would you say the same," she ventured&mdash;secretly
+overjoyed that he shared her opinion&mdash;"if you
+... were in Mark's position?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Keith smiled.  His anger had spent itself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Most likely I should be as cruelly considerate as he
+is being now.  But standing outside, I can get a clearer
+view of things.  Helen, if he persists in holding back,
+it's she that will suffer most: and I wouldn't mind
+telling him so in very plain English.  But it would
+be infinitely better, for her own chances, if Sheila
+could be induced to speak for herself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Keith!  By whom?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"By me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Would you do it&mdash;really?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I would, if only to refute that woman's fairy tale...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But&mdash;when?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To-day, if possible."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helen's eyebrows were eloquent.  It was not the
+first time, since war awakened him, that she had been
+taken aback by his quiet swiftness of thought and
+decision.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Before she had recovered from her surprise, he was
+speaking again.  "So much for Mark and Sheila&mdash;good
+luck to them!  As for yourself&mdash;"  He
+paused, gazing at her steadfastly.  "You ... blessed
+woman, has the truth never once dawned on
+you ... in all these years...?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was visibly dawning on her now, half blinding
+her with its brightness.  She had thought to lift a
+corner of the curtain, and here he was flinging back
+the whole of it that she might see and know the depth
+of her misunderstanding.  Confronted thus by the
+real, hidden Keith, she found it amazingly difficult
+to say even a word in reply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mark did write something once," she admitted
+lamely, "in his last letter from the trenches."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He could smile now at the tragic memory.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That accounts for the missing sheet?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And you didn't believe him?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No.  Somehow it seemed ... preposterous."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Why</i> preposterous?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His laconic bluntness told her how deeply he was
+moved.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Keith, I'm eight years older than you.  And ... I
+felt as if it ought to be Sheila.  And&mdash;"  A still
+longer pause.  Her heart was beating in jerks.  "I
+wasn't altogether sure ... of myself.  Then when
+you came back, you gave no sign&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"'He either fears his fate too much, or his deserts
+are small,'" Keith quoted, still watching her sunlit
+face.  "A little of both&mdash;in this case.  My dear ... it's
+more than fifteen years now that I've loved you.
+I've never given a thought to any other woman.  And
+I've never entertained a shred of hope&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She tried to speak.  It was useless: but the quiver
+of her lips emboldened him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Helen&mdash;was I wrong?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Partly wrong."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Does that mean ... would you&mdash;could you
+marry me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I think it's rather ... could <i>you</i>," she said very
+low; and if her words were faintly discouraging, he
+had the tender assurance of her eyes.  "I must be
+frank with you, Keith.  What I have to give&mdash;though
+I give it with all my heart&mdash;is not the same thing
+... quite.  I can't be&mdash;you understand?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course I understand....'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But that's only half," she interposed, smiling.
+"And I had to say it.  The other half is ... I love
+you dearly.  I need you ... at every turn.  We
+seem to belong in a very special way to each other.
+And this morning I wanted to murder Mrs. Melrose.
+If that's confession enough...?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>If</i>?" he echoed: and she had never heard his
+expressive voice condense so much feeling into a single
+word.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had risen in speaking, and now she stood before
+him in the clear sunlight, that made her eyes look bluer
+than ever, and discovered gleams of silver in her
+red-brown hair.  But Keith had no concern for these, or
+for the lines pencilled by sorrow and strain.  He looked
+beyond them to the springs of eternal youth within
+her.  Frankly, and in a manner delightfully her own,
+she had confessed her need of him; yet he made no
+move towards her.  They simply stood there, a foot
+of space between them, their spirits linked in closest
+communion&mdash;satisfied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even had they been indoors it is doubtful whether
+Keith would have done otherwise.  The truth
+penetrated slowly; and for him that moment had a
+sacredness, an exaltation&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A touch, a word, would have brought them down to
+earth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet it was he who first became aware of the "scarlet
+spider" skimming down the drive.  "Sheila," he
+said quietly.  "I'm certain of it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he was right.  The telegram was addressed
+to Helen, and it ran: "Cannot come Wednesday.
+Please forgive.&mdash;SHEILA."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She handed it to Keith.  He read it without
+comment and put out his hand for a form.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helen stood close to him, almost touching his elbow,
+while he wrote: "Arrange to be free to-day.  I am
+coming this morning.  Urgent.&mdash;MACNAIR."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Be off with that double quick," he said to the
+boy.  Then, as the red wheels vanished, he turned
+to Helen.  "Just a chance it may get there before me
+and pave the way.  I've business first in Wynchmere
+that can't wait."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He spoke so completely in his ordinary manner that
+Helen felt almost as if their wonderful moment must
+have been a dream.  But it was no dream.  He was
+talking of it now in the same calm fashion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We won't tell Mark&mdash;yet," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No.  It would be cruel.  I may not even go up till
+you come back.  He said he might work this morning
+and wanted to be alone.  Afraid, I suspect, of my
+returning to the attack!  Oh, Keith, I <i>hope</i> you
+succeed."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I mean to.  I hope she will.  That's more to the
+point."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helen sighed.  "He simply adores her.  One sees
+the difference&mdash;after Bel.  But he's hopelessly obstinate
+about it.  I was quite angry with him last night."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Poor old chap!"  His eyes dwelt upon her tenderly.
+"Sometimes I wonder which of your two children
+you love best."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And I've sometimes wondered which of them <i>you</i>
+loved best!" was her counter-thrust to that
+impermissible remark.  "Go soon.  And ... come back
+soon.  Mrs. Melrose will never forgive me!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We'll survive that.  And she'll have me to reckon
+with now...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Before leaving, he came to her in the drawing-room,
+where she was filling a bowl with daffodils.  Silently
+he held out his hands, and she gave him both her own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Rather wet!" she said, to cover a troublesome
+feeling of confusion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He smiled and drew her nearer.  Then, very quietly,
+as if it were an act of consecration, he stooped and
+kissed her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Afterwards she came out and waved to him from
+the doorstep as he drove away: the same Keith to
+whom she had played elder sister for years; and yet so
+strange a Keith that it was as if she had barely known
+him till to-day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Putting on her garden hat, she wandered out into
+the pinewood, dappled with sun and shadow, jewelled
+with patches of moss.  Letters were waiting to be
+written.  Let them wait.  She had a consuming need
+to be alone with her amazing knowledge and her so
+strangely reawakened heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fifteen years!  What was she, to deserve such love
+from two such men as Richard and Keith?  Deliberately
+she linked their names in her mind.  Deliberately
+she stood still with uplifted face and closed eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Richard, <i>do</i> you understand?" she whispered
+just above her breath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Only the pine branches rustled overhead.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0406"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER VI
+</h3>
+
+<p class="intro2">
+  "You yourself know not how beautiful is your gift."<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;SIR RABINDRANATH TAGORE.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+It was Mrs. Melrose who opened Keith's telegram,
+and her elation may be conceived.  Sheila was
+engaged, at the moment, on a new arrival; but directly
+she was free, her mother beckoned her mysteriously
+into the passage and handed her the envelope.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I opened it, just to see if there was any answer,"
+she explained with repressed eagerness, while Sheila
+stood frowning at the cryptic message that might
+mean ... anything, everything.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I <i>wish</i> you wouldn't open telegrams addressed to
+me, Mother," she said, none too graciously.  It was
+the second time lately that Mrs. Melrose had been
+guilty of that dire offence; and she was one of the very
+few people who knew that Sheila could snap on provocation:
+a sufficiently illuminating comment on their
+relation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, really, dear, one doesn't <i>expect</i> a wire to be a
+love-letter in disguise!"  Sheila, who could be dense
+at times, missed the delicate implication that Keith's
+message amounted to a proposal of marriage.  "Of
+course you must be free.  I'll arrange it with Sister
+Nelson."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, please don't trouble.  <i>I</i> can arrange things all
+right."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she did.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some twenty minutes later, Mark's car drew up before
+the spacious, flat-fronted Georgian house; and
+Keith sprang out of it.  To-day all his movements had
+a new alertness.  He looked and felt five years younger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Three shallow steps led up to the front door; and
+just as he reached these, Sheila came out in hat and
+coat, plainly prepared to join him.  She looked paler
+than usual, but entirely mistress of herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You got my wire?" he asked superfluously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  Very mysterious!  So I thought ... better
+be prepared for emergencies.  Nothing wrong with
+Mums?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No.  Mums is particularly well this morning.
+It's not on <i>her</i> account I'm here."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The emphasised word brought a faint glow to her
+cheeks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mark?" she asked, almost under her breath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes&mdash;Mark."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You mean&mdash;he sent you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No.  The impulse was altogether my own.  I am
+here because I believe in you, Sheila.  Come for a
+stroll down the garden before we start back."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She came&mdash;bewildered, palpitating; prepared for
+almost anything but the actual event.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From the house of many windows, park-like grounds
+sloped gently down to the Wynch, broader and lazier
+here than at Wynchcombe Friars.  The grass was
+bright with crocuses and early daffodils; and on the
+bare boughs overhead, half-opened leaf-buds gleamed
+like jewels in the sun.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Keith, as he turned, caught sight of Mrs. Melrose
+at an upper window, watching them go.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Your mother has her eye on us," he remarked
+casually.  "I believe she thinks I've come tearing over
+to make you an offer of marriage!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>You</i>!"  Sheila confronted him in blank surprise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't be alarmed," Keith reassured her, with
+his whimsical smile.  "I've already been guilty of it
+once this morning."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At that her eyes opened wider than ever, and he
+saw light dawn in their depths.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mums?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How simply splendid!  It's been my pet, private
+dream for ages.  But I was afraid...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So was I.  Horribly afraid.  Without reason, I
+am thankful to say."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A pause.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I want ... to congratulate you," she said softly.
+"There's no one on earth like Mums.  She's the
+youngest of us all.  And ... Mark?  Isn't he glad?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mark's in no mood to be glad about anything,"
+Keith answered, with a straight look.  "That's why
+I am here.  We haven't told him.  We can't tell
+him ... yet.  And we can't help him, either of us.
+Only you can do that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She flushed hotly and looked down at the crocuses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm afraid you overestimate my powers.  I've
+done all ... I can.'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, you've <i>not</i> done all," he corrected her gently.
+"Or I should not be standing here.  I take it that you
+... care for Mark: that you have always cared."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She drew in her lips and answered nothing.  Then
+she looked up at him, her secret unveiled.  Strangely,
+it did not hurt her that he should know.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I thought so," he remarked to her silence.  "And
+on the strength of that conviction, I've come over to
+put the whole truth before you.  It's no easy thing
+I'm going to ask of you, Sheila.  But I believe in
+you&mdash;as I said."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He moved on in speaking, and she moved on
+beside him&mdash;wondering, fearing, yet longing to
+know all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Plainly and straightforwardly he told of her mother's
+letter; quieting, with a tactful hand, her incidental
+burst of indignation.  Personally, he assured her, he
+felt quite grateful to Mrs. Melrose, who, in trying
+to do him one good turn, had inadvertently done him
+another.  That consideration calmed her a little and
+touched up her sense of humour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If she's been any help to you and Mums, I forgive
+her ... for that part of it," she said in a voice that
+quivered between a laugh and a sob.  "But I won't
+forgive her ... about Mark ... <i>ever</i>."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And when Sheila said that, she meant it.  She had
+never forgiven Bel.  It was the streak of Northern
+granite in her disposition.  Keith had purposely
+included those remarks that had roused his own
+anger.  He had reckoned them his strongest cards.
+He now perceived them to be stronger than he had
+supposed, and he suffered a passing twinge of
+conscience.  But the matter at stake was too vital to
+be tripped up by side issues: and he went on to tell her,
+in quiet forcible phrases, of Helen's distress, of Mark's
+devotion that appeared to confirm rather than weaken
+his flat refusal to sacrifice her on the altar of his own
+supreme need.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Sheila heard him out in an unbroken silence.
+He could only gauge the effect of his revelation by her
+uneven breathing and an occasional movement of her
+lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he had told all, he stood still and confronted
+her.  "There, my dear," he said, a deep note of feeling
+in his voice.  "It's a tragic tangle.  And, for love of
+Mark and you ... and Helen, I'd go almost any
+length to unravel it.  But there's only one who can
+do that.  And now perhaps you can guess what it is I
+came to say."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She still remained silent, studying a patch of crocuses,
+realising acutely all that his request implied;
+shrinking, yet passionately longing to go in and win
+that which was her own.  She had gone very pale
+again.  But as realisation deepened, her face became
+one burning blush.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you mean ... that I must offer ... myself?"
+she asked at length, addressing her question
+to the crocuses.  "I&mdash;I almost did it yesterday.
+At least ... I'm sure he saw it in my eyes.  And
+... he slipped away."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  He would.  I am afraid&mdash;if you really want
+to convince him, you must put aside all the
+conventionalities, all your natural reluctance, and
+... show him your heart.  <i>Make</i> him believe.  He only
+hesitates, remember, from the highest motives and
+because he has no conception how deeply you care.&mdash;Now,
+will you come along with me and put everything
+right for the four of us?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There fell another tremendous silence.  Keith knew
+well that he could scarcely have asked a harder thing
+of her.  Second after second she stood there, her hands
+clenched, wrestling with her pride, her dumbness....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then she said slowly, as if speaking to herself: "I
+can't ... I <i>can't</i>.  It's against my whole nature.
+The words would never come.  Oh <i>why</i> ... won't
+he understand?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because he is a very chivalrous gentleman,"
+Keith answered with significant emphasis.  "And if
+you really can't bring yourself to make a move, well
+... I must go back alone and confess I was mistaken.
+Of course, <i>I</i> can speak to him myself.  But
+if I failed, I should fail fatally.&mdash;It is strange.  I felt
+absolutely certain of you, Sheila.&mdash;Is that your final,
+considered answer?  Am I to go?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By a wise intuition he refrained from pleading or
+further argument, and his stern quietness stung her
+as no reproach would have done.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly she felt Mark himself tugging at her heart.
+She saw the look in his eyes, heard again those terrible
+words that haunted her brain.  And was this to be
+the end?  Were they all to be made miserable because
+there were bounds that her pride could not pass, a
+limit beyond which she could not or would not go?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Against that arbitrary decree all her deeper, truer
+nature rose up in revolt.  There were no bounds
+... no limits.  In that critical moment of decision her
+childhood's creed of courage came timely to her aid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked up at last: and Keith saw that he had
+prevailed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No.  You are <i>not</i> going back alone," she said,
+steadfastly meeting his gaze.  "I was a coward to say
+... I couldn't speak to him.  I can.  And I will."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah&mdash;that's more like it!"  There was vast relief
+in Keith's tone.  "You've saved my reputation for
+omniscience.  Now, come and save Mark from himself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>If</i> I can," she murmured, with a catch in her
+breath; and they hurried back up the slope towards
+the house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There on the steps they descried, afar off, the
+severely repressed figure of Mrs. Melrose radiating
+congratulations.  Keith, the resourceful, felt
+suddenly nonplussed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sheila, look there!  We're done for."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not a bit of it," Sheila replied in her most
+matter-of-fact tone.  "We're in a mortal hurry and we don't
+happen to notice her till we're in the car."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Capital!  Lucky I backed it well away from the
+entrance."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was done&mdash;and neatly done.  Keith was just
+turning the car when he ostentatiously caught sight of
+his would-be mother-in-law.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good morning, Mrs. Melrose," he called out
+cheerfully.  "I'm sorry I can't stop.  So good of you to
+spare her.  She's badly wanted over there."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Melrose, completely mystified and very much
+annoyed, fluttered a perfunctory hand and went back
+into the house wondering irritably what on earth had
+happened to Mr. Macnair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That Lady Forsyth could have happened to him
+never so much as entered her head.  There had been
+a good deal of talk at one time; but it had fizzled out
+for want of fuel.  Her chief concern at the moment
+was to prevent Sheila from becoming entangled
+again with Mark.  When he would have been a really
+suitable match, she had muddled things.  Just like
+her!  But now&mdash;position or no position&mdash;it wouldn't
+do at all&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+And Sheila, with never a word of her intent, was
+speeding through the April sunshine, bent upon a
+permanent entanglement with Mark: one that no mother
+in creation could undo.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the little car lightly tossed the miles aside, he?
+courage and purpose rose steadily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Keith, for all his own eagerness, drove at a low speed.
+He knew well, from experience, how rushing through
+the air scatters and paralyses thought.  They had
+but seven miles to cover; and he guessed rightly that
+Sheila needed a quiet breathing space to mobilise her
+spiritual forces for the brave adventure in hand.  So
+they drove leisurely between woods and fields and
+uplands, quick with new life and young desires.  And
+throughout that most companionable drive they
+scarcely exchanged a word.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Only when Keith handed Sheila out of the car, he
+retained her hand a moment in his own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Luck follows pluck," he said, smiling.  "<i>I</i> have
+no fear.  But first we must find Helen."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They found her basking on the terrace with an
+open book in her lap.  As a matter of fact, she had
+not read two pages.  She had done literally nothing
+but await their arrival.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, here she is," Keith said, as Helen sprang
+up to greet them.  "My private trophy.  How's
+Mark?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I haven't been near him.  I began to think you
+would never come."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ungrateful!" he reproached her gravely.  "We've
+done it all in record time.  We deserve congratulation.
+Now&mdash;give her your blessing and don't keep
+her long."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While the blessing was in progress he left them.
+His own turn would come in time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dearest one," Sheila murmured between her
+kisses, "I <i>do</i> congratulate you with all my soul.  He's
+a treasure.  This morning....  But you shall hear
+all that ... afterwards."  Then she stood back a
+little, blushing and smiling.  "Mums, tell me true.
+Am I being very unspeakable ... after yesterday?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very unspeakable!"  The older woman slipped
+an arm round her and drew her through the open
+French window into the house.  "God bless you,
+child," she added gravely, kissing her again.  "You're
+being angelically a woman.  But, darling ... are
+you quite, <i>quite</i> sure...?"  Her eyes completed the
+question.  "I've had pricks of conscience, waiting
+here.  Have you realised ... <i>every</i>thing?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  Everything.  Long ago," Sheila answered
+steadily, a hot wave of colour in her cheeks.  "It
+simply doesn't count.  Nothing counts ... except him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In that case I'm satisfied.  But I couldn't forget
+what you said once at Inveraig."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, that!  Fancy your remembering.  But
+now&mdash;it's Mark.  He's my share of the War.  And
+... gospel truth, Mums&mdash;I'd sooner 'mother' him than
+anything else on earth."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh&mdash;if you can only make him understand <i>that</i>!"  Tears
+stood in Helen's eyes.  "It was not for nothing
+I christened you 'Queen of the Poor Things.'"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mums, how <i>dare</i> you!"  For a moment Sheila was
+really angry.  "He's <i>not</i> a poor thing.  He's the most
+glorious thing that was ever made.&mdash;Now, let me fly
+upstairs.  'Valour will come and go!'"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her low laugh had a break in it, and she hurried
+from the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Outside the studio, she paused to steady herself.
+No sound came from within; and she opened the door
+an inch or two.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mark," she called softly.  "It's Sheila.  Can I
+come in?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Sheila!</i>"  Amazement and smothered passion
+sounded in his voice.  But there was fear in it also.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come in, of course," he added hastily, as if to
+cover both.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She found him by the open window, sitting at his
+easel, crayon in hand: and on the easel stood a delicate
+pastel study of herself.  If courage had wavered
+a moment, it revived at that.  She looked from him to
+the picture with lifted brows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Quite good," she said, slipping past the awkward
+explanation of her presence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It isn't.  It's a wretched travesty!'" he answered
+bluntly.  "But one must do something ... to keep
+going."  He paused and scanned her face searchingly.
+She did not attempt to avoid his gaze.  Her eyes were
+radiant, as if the windows of her soul were flung open
+to the sunrise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sudden fear came upon him and sudden remembrance
+of his mother's words.  He had not fortified
+himself to resist this.  Yet resist it he must.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Why</i> have you come again so soon ... like this?"
+he asked, going straight to the point in his usual fashion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because ... after yesterday..."  She hesitated
+and drew in her lips.  "There could be only one
+way to put things straight between us and make you
+unsay that bitter thing about the dead having the best
+of it.  Mark, it haunted me.  But ... I couldn't
+have brought myself to come, like this, so soon, except
+for Mr. Macnair and Mother's extraordinary letter
+to Mums."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What letter?  Has Mums anything to do with
+this?" Mark flashed out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Sheila was thankful she could answer
+truthfully: "No.  It was all Mr. Macnair.  He came
+over because of that letter&mdash;I'll tell you afterwards&mdash;and
+I found he knew ... about my caring.  He was
+splendid.  He made me see ... there was only this
+one way.  He said&mdash;'Come!'  And he encouraged
+me...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Keith encouraged you?  It was no business of
+his."  Mark had found his voice at last.  He had
+forgotten the mysterious letter.  There was only
+room in him for one hope, one fear.  "Sheila
+... what does it all mean?  Are you&mdash;&mdash;?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, Mark"&mdash;her voice took its deepest, tenderest
+tone&mdash;"I am ... asking you to marry me, because
+I know, now, that you will never do it yourself.  And
+I know, now, that you do ... care...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"'<i>Care</i>?' ... I simply worship you.  And, for that
+very reason, I will not take advantage of your heavenly
+impulse of devotion; though God knows I honour you
+for it.  Broken things appeal so strongly to your
+heart.  You have to make allowance for that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have to make allowance for nothing."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her tone was repressed now and her eyes veiled.
+Was she to repeat yesterday's ordeal, with aggravations?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You don't understand," he forced himself to say.
+"You can't understand all it would mean.  Sheila
+... a man in my case has no right to offer, or to accept,
+marriage: and I ... I refuse to snatch happiness at
+your expense.  Keith ought to have known me better
+by now....  You, of all people, tied to a cripple
+... a sort of glorified hospital nurse!  If I shrank
+from sacrificing a worthless woman like Miss Alison,
+is it likely I would sacrifice you...?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Sheila had endured enough.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, Mark, can't you see?  Are you determined not
+to see?" she cried, her low voice tremulous with
+passion, her twilight blue eyes full of pain.  "For her,
+it would have been a sacrifice.  For me ... I&mdash;I
+can't find the word that's big enough.  It's not that I
+don't understand&mdash;and admire your reluctance.  But
+you have to understand too.  Mark ... must I say all?
+Must I tell you that from the very beginning, since I
+was sixteen, there's been no one ... but you.  There
+will never be.  You are all I want on earth.  You
+say ... you have no right.  But remember, there's
+every hope....  Dr. Norton says so.  And even if
+there was ... no hope, if you were three times as
+helpless as you are, I would still rather be <i>your</i>
+hospital nurse than any other man's ... wife."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At that, with an abrupt movement, he turned away
+and hid his face in his hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, leave me ... leave me," he murmured
+desperately.  "How <i>can</i> I see clear, think clear, when
+you stand there ... tempting me&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His voice broke.  Silence fell&mdash;and lasted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila continued to stand there.  Her hands were
+cold, her limbs shaking.  If she left him now, his
+strong will would reassert itself.  She could not go
+through this again.  And there an end.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pride argued: "In the face of flat refusal, you can go
+no further."  But she saw Mark's shoulders heave
+... once; and there could be no more argument;
+no more pride&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Without a word she went close up to him, slipped
+a hand round his head and drew it against her breast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In that fashion she gave him her answer.  Yet he
+made no sign, till two tears fell upon his hands that hid
+him from her.  Then he uncovered his face and looked
+up into hers, as an earth-bound soul may look into
+heaven.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Beloved," he whispered, "it's a desperate risk.
+You've no right ... I've no right...."  But his
+arms were round her; and his head, that still leaned
+against her, felt the glad leap of her heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We have the right, if we choose," she whispered,
+and stooped her face to his....
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+At last he drew her down on to his knee and set
+her a little away to reassure himself that the impossible
+had actually come to pass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she sat there smiling at him: too purely exultant
+to do anything but smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You little thing&mdash;you little lovely thing!" he said
+in a low voice of rapture.  "You're the first person
+that's ever cut right across my will and bowled me
+over.  I swore to poor Mums last night that nothing
+would induce me&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And you were conquered by a little thing!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Very tenderly she laid her cheek against his.  "Most
+wholesome for you&mdash;and a triumph for me!"  She
+paused, dwelling on him ... realising in her turn.
+"Mark, I wish I wasn't quite so small, then I could
+help you more, my own self.  Lifting you&mdash;and
+that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Lifting me!"  His eyes were misty with tenderness.
+"You've lifted me clean out of the nethermost
+hell.  Isn't that enough in the way of assistance?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes&mdash;if I could believe&mdash;&mdash;!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, you may believe.  I'm not given to high-flown
+talk.  You've saved me from being a curse to
+myself and every one belonging to me.  That's the
+way Sheila-people are made!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then his face grew grave and the arm that was
+round her tightened its hold.  "Mouse, it's difficult to
+speak of ... the hidden things.  But I do want you
+to know what it means to me that you should have
+come, like this, refusing to let convention or my own
+limitations stand in the way of our great reality.  It's
+readjusted the whole perspective of things, that was in
+great danger of getting out of gear altogether."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I saw that," she answered, her eyes filling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course you did, angel of wisdom.  And you've
+made me see&mdash;no end of things.  There'll be some
+talk, no doubt, among the kind of people who must
+talk&mdash;or perish.  But, when all's said, if you and I
+choose not to regard this irksome disability, no
+one else has any call to make a howl about it.  After
+all it's nothing&mdash;less than nothing&mdash;in to-day's vast
+sum of tragedy.  And there remains the great
+outstanding fact that it has saved me, so as by fire, from
+a woman whose love would have wrecked my life.
+Also&mdash;it has given me you, which is a long sight more
+than I deserve."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No&mdash;<i>no</i>," she protested low and passionately.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I say 'Yes!'  And I mean it.  But&mdash;there's one
+thing I wanted to tell you yesterday and couldn't,
+for fear of telling ... all the rest."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You were very cruel yesterday."  A quiver
+crossed her face, and he held her closer still.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My darling, how could I dream you cared&mdash;like
+that!  It knocked me to pieces.  And now&mdash;I can
+only thank God all my days for Keith's insight and
+your courage.  But ... what I'm trying to tell you
+is this.  The deepest and best in me, that was yours
+in the beginning, <i>has been</i> yours all along&mdash;buried
+under rubbish, but alive and untarnished by any
+contact with <i>her</i>.  That's what I meant when I said
+she never touched the depths.  Mouse&mdash;are you glad
+to know that?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She only sat there gazing at him, mute homage in
+her eyes.  "It's too much.  I can't say it," she
+murmured at last.  "And now&mdash;there's poor Mr. Seldon
+torn in two.  Perhaps ... it's the same with
+him&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Seldon!  Was it <i>her</i> you were talking of?  Poor
+devil!  Is she going to marry him?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't even know if he's asked her.  They seem
+to have talked round it all.  She says ... you raised
+her standard.  He implies ... I've done the
+same for him.  That seems to make complications.
+So there they are&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And here <i>we</i> are&mdash;God be praised!" Mark broke
+in, a note of triumph in his deep voice.  "And we're
+going to achieve something between us, you and I,
+now you've made a live man of me again.  There's
+a deal of work I can still do with a Sheila-wife to
+help me.  How about dedicating the arts and crafts
+colony entirely to our own fellows disabled in this war.
+And those who are fit for it shall be put on to the land.
+My own disablement won't hamper me there.  It's a
+mustard-seed of a notion.  It may grow into a tree.
+There's a programme for you.  All your doing!
+You've been my real source of inspiration from the
+first.  And you always will be.&mdash;Don't cry about it,
+Beloved.  It's too splendid for anything."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes&mdash;that's why," she answered lucidly&mdash;and
+could no more.  The great wave of joy that swelled up
+within her broke softly in a shower of tears.  It was
+the pent-up emotion of months.  And Mark drew
+her head against his shoulder, comforted and
+caressed her; kissed away her tears and held her to
+him without a word till she had regained her lost
+control.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then: "You're not going back to-night; don't you
+think it!" he said in her ear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't think it," she answered, with a small
+shiver of happiness.  "Mother would bite me to
+pieces."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, that settles it.  You're under my orders
+now: and you take your leave from to-day.  You must
+write a note to explain.  Macgregor can handle the
+little car.  She almost drives herself, and he can
+bring any scrap of luggage you're wanting."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Listen to the autocrat!"  She sat upright now,
+beaming on him.  "And I've got to write a note of
+explanation.  And <i>you</i> don't realise yet what that
+means."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why?  Where's the mystery?  That letter?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  Interfering people are quite useful
+sometimes&mdash;by accident!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well&mdash;let's hear.  What's she been up to now?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus invited, Sheila gave him a revised version of
+the letter that had achieved precisely what it set out to
+prevent.  She omitted the most egregious remarks
+and skimmed lightly over the talk about herself and
+him; but before she had finished her recital, Mark's
+quick brain perceived whither it led.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course, Mums took it straight to Keith," he
+broke in, exultantly, "and of course the good fellow
+had to blurt out the truth in self-defence.  Well
+played, Mrs. Melrose!  But why the dickens didn't
+they come straight up and tell me.  Here I've been
+left in the dark for hours: and I'm supposed to be
+master of this house!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, you see," Sheila explained, dimpling,
+"Mr. Macnair was too busy rushing off to fetch me.  And
+Mums couldn't bear to tell you when you were so
+unhappy."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark's eyes softened at that.  "Just like her.  How
+the woman spoils me!  And I'm afraid you'll be as bad."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm not so sure.  I can be sterner than Mums.
+Mr. Macnair could tell you that...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Could he?  I'll ask him.  And he carried you off,
+like an elderly Lochinvar, under your mother's very
+eyes!  Splendid chap, Keith!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  But he ought to know you better by now,"
+she reminded him gravely.  "And he had no business
+to encourage me!  But with Mother flinging me at his
+head, you can't blame the poor man if he was in a
+hurry to account for me by foisting me on to you.&mdash;And
+I'm going to tell Mother the whole truth," she
+concluded, colouring a little at thought of the ordeal.
+"That I knew you wanted me and wouldn't ask, so I
+came over and proposed to you ... and I'm not
+ashamed of the fact!&mdash;Oh, look, there they are on the
+terrace, too pleased with each other to bother about us."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a few minutes Mark sat watching them with a
+very full heart.  Keith was talking in his grave quiet
+fashion, and Helen walked close beside him,
+listening&mdash;absorbed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Seems a shame to interrupt them," Mark said
+softly.  "But I want her.  She's had worry enough
+on my account, bless her!  And this is going to atone
+for it all."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then at the top of his voice, he called out: "Hullo,
+Mother!  Mums!  Come along and report yourself
+at headquarters."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stopped, turned, and stood a moment smiling
+up at him.  His voice, his face told her all she needed
+to know.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come on&mdash;quick!" he repeated; and she came, as
+always, obedient to his summons.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br></p>
+
+<p class="t3">
+THE END
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br><br></p>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78882 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
diff --git a/78882-h/images/img-cover.jpg b/78882-h/images/img-cover.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a4b7f6a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/78882-h/images/img-cover.jpg
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6c72794
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This book, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..47b13bc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+[Project Gutenberg](https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for eBook [#78882](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78882)