Thus preached the Pasteur, and what he said gave Godfrey the greatest comfort. Still, being young, he made one mistake. He did send Madame Riennes some money, partly out of pity—ten pounds in a postal order without any covering letter, a folly that did not tend to a cessation of her epistolatory efforts.

On reaching town Godfrey went straight to Hampstead. There to his surprise he found all prepared for his reception.

"I was expecting you, my dear," said Mrs. Parsons, "and even have a little bit extra in the house in case you should come."

"Why, when I told you I had gone home for a month?" asked Godfrey.

"Why? For the same reason as I knows that oil and vinegar won't abide mixed in the same bottle. I was sure enough that being a man grown, you and your father could never get on together in one house. But perhaps there is something else in it too," she added doubtfully.

Then Godfrey told her that there was something else, and indeed all about the business.

"Well, there you are, and there's nothing to be said, or at least so much that it comes to the same thing," remarked Mrs. Parsons, in a reflective tone, when he had finished his story. "But what I want to know," she went on, "is why these kind of things happen. You two—I mean you and Miss Isobel—are just fitted to each other, appointed together by Nature, so to speak, and fond as a couple of doves upon a perch. So why shouldn't you take each other and have done? What is there to come between a young man and a young woman such as you are?"

"I don't know," groaned Godfrey.

"No, nor don't I; and yet something does come between. What's the meaning of it all? Why do things always go cussed in this 'ere world? Is there a devil about what manages it, or is it just chance? Why shouldn't people have what they want and when it's wanted, instead of being forced to wait until perhaps it isn't, or can't be enjoyed, or often enough to lose it altogether? You can't answer, and nor can't I; only at times I do think, notwithstanding all my Christian teachings and hundreds and hundreds of your father's sermons, that the devil, he's top-dog here. And as for that there foreign woman whose letter you've read to me, she's his housemaid. Not but what I'm sure it will all come right at last," she added, with an attempt at cheerfulness.

"I hope so," replied Godfrey, without conviction, and went to bed.

Presently he descended from his room again, bearing a pill-box in which was enclosed a certain ring that years before he had bought at Lucerne, a ring set with two hearts of turquoise.

"I promised not to write," he said, "but you might address this to her. She'll know what it is, for I told her about it."

"Yes," said Mrs. Parsons, "the young lady shall have that box of pills. Being upset, it may do her good."

In due course Isobel did have it; also the box came back addressed to Mrs. Parsons. In it was another ring, a simple band of ancient gold—as a matter of fact, it was Roman, a betrothal ring of two thousand years ago. Round it was a scrap of paper on which was written:

"This was dug up in a grave. My great-grandmother gave it to my great-grandfather when they became engaged about a hundred years ago, and he wore it all his life, as in a bygone age someone else had done. Now the great-granddaughter gives it to another. Let him wear it all his life, whatever happens to her, or to him. Then let it go to the grave again, perhaps to be worn by others far centuries hence."

Godfrey understood and set it on the third finger of his left hand, where it remained night and day, and year by year.



So that matter ended, and afterwards came silence and darkness which endured for ten years or more. From his father he heard nothing, nor on his part did he ever write to him again. Indeed the first news concerning him which reached Godfrey was that of his death which happened some seven years later, apparently after a brief illness. Even of this he would not have learned, since no one took the trouble to put it in any paper that he saw, had it not chanced that the Rev. Mr. Knight died intestate, and that therefore his small belongings descended to Godfrey as his natural heir. With them were a number of papers, among which in the after days Godfrey found the very letter that Isobel wrote to him which his father "posted" in his desk.

For his son there was no word, a circumstance that showed the implacability of this man's character. Notwithstanding his continual profession of the highest Christian principles he could never forget or forgive, and this although it was he who was in fault. For what wrong had Godfrey done to him in loving a woman whom he did not chance to like? So he died silent, bearing his resentment to the grave. And yet some odd sense of justice prevented him from robbing Godfrey of his little inheritance, something under two thousand pounds, that came on a policy of insurance and certain savings, a sum which in after years when money was plentiful with him Godfrey appointed to the repair and beautifying of the Abbey Church at Monk's Acre.

Strangely enough, although from his childhood they had been always estranged, Godfrey felt this conduct of his father very much indeed. It seemed dreadful to him that he should vanish thus into the darkness, taking his wrath with him; and often he wondered if it still animated him there. Also he wondered what could be the possible purpose of it all, and indeed why his father was so fashioned that he could grow venomous over such a matter. To all of which questions no answer came, although one suggested itself to him—namely, that he was the victim of some hereditary taint, and therefore not in fact to blame.

In the case of Isobel the darkness was equally dense, for both of them kept their word, and with the single exception of the episode of the exchange of rings, neither attempted to communicate with the other directly or indirectly. From Mrs. Parsons he heard that Hawk's Hall was shut up, and that Sir John and his daughter lived mostly in London or at a place that the former had bought in Scotland. Once indeed Mrs. Parsons did write, or got someone else to write, to him that she had seen Isobel drive past her in the street, and that she looked well, though rather "stern and quiet-like."

That was all the news Godfrey had of Isobel during those ten years, since she was not a person who advertised her movements in the papers, although for her sake he became a great student of society gossip. Also he read with care all announcements of engagements and marriages in The Times, and the deaths, too, for the matter of that, but happily quite without result. Indeed in view of her declaration he ought to have been, and, in fact, was, ashamed of his research; but then, who could be quite sure of anything in this world?

Sir John, he knew, was living, because from time to time he saw his name in lists of subscriptions of a sort that appear under royal patronage and are largely advertised.

So between these two swung a veil of darkness, although, had he but known it, this was not nearly so impenetrable to Isobel as to himself. Somehow—possibly Arthur Thorburn had friends with whom he corresponded in England who knew Isobel—she acquired information as to every detail of his career. Indeed when he came to learn everything he was absolutely amazed at the particulars with which she was acquainted, whereof there were certain that he would have preferred to have kept to himself. But she had them all, with dates and surrounding circumstances and the rest; thousands of miles of ocean had been no bar to her searching gaze.

For his part he was not without consolations, since, strangely enough, he never felt as if she were lost to him, or indeed far away; it was always as though she were in the next room, or at any rate in the next street. There are individuals of sensitive mind, and he was one of them, who know well enough when such a total loss has occurred. It has been well said that the dead are never really dead to us until they are forgotten, and the same applies to the living. While they remember us, they are never so very far away, and what is more we, or some of us, are quite aware if they have ceased to remember, for then the door is shut and the doorway built up and our hearts tell us that this has been done.

In Godfrey's case with Isobel, not only did the doorway remained unfilled—the door itself was always ajar. Although seas divided them and over these no whisper came, yet he felt her thought leaping to him across the world. Especially did this happen at night when he laid himself down to sleep, perhaps because then his mind was most receptive, and since their hours of going to rest must have been different, he being in India and she in England, she could scarcely have been reflecting on him as he fondly believed, at the moment when she, too, entered into the world called sleep.

Therefore, either it was all imagination or he caught her waking thoughts, or perhaps those that haunted her upon this border land were delayed until his subtler being could interpret them. Who knows? At least, unless something had happened to disturb him, those nights were rare when as he was shutting his eyes, Godfrey did not seem to be sensible of Isobel's presence. At any rate, he knew that she had not forgotten; he knew that somewhere in the vast world she was ever thinking of him with more intensity than she thought of any other man or thing. And during all those lonely years this knowledge or belief was his greatest comfort.

Not that Godfrey's life in India was in any way unhappy. On the contrary it was a full and active life. He worked hard at his profession and succeeded in it to a limited extent, and he had his friends, especially his great friend Arthur Thorburn, who always clung to him. He had his flirtations also; being a man of susceptibility who was popular with women, how could they be avoided? For above all things Godfrey was a man, not a hermit or a saint or an aesthete, but just a man with more gifts of a sort than have some others. He lived the life of the rest, he hunted, he shot tigers, doing those things that the Anglo-Indian officer does, but all the same he studied. Whether it were of his trade of soldiering, or of the natives, or of Eastern thought and law, he was always learning something, till at last he knew a great deal, often he wondered to what end.

And yet, with all his friends and acquaintances, in a way he remained a very lonely man, as those who are a little out of the ordinary often do. In the common groove we rub against the other marbles running down it, but once we leap over its edge, then where are we? We cannot wander off into space because of the attraction of the earth that is so near to us, and yet we are alone in the air until with a bump we meet our native ground. Therefore for the most of us the groove is much better. And yet some who leave it have been carried elsewhere, if only for a little while, like St. Paul into the third heaven.



CHAPTER XVIII

FRANCE—AND AFTER

Nothing so very remarkable happened to Godfrey during those ten years of his life in India, or at least only one or two things. Thus once he got into a scrape for which he was not really responsible, and got out of it again, as he imagined, without remark, until Isobel showed her common and rather painful intimacy with its details, of which she appeared to take a somewhat uncharitable view, at any rate so far as the lady was concerned.

The other matter was more serious, since it involved the loss of his greatest friend, Arthur Thorburn. Briefly, what happened was this. There was a frontier disturbance. Godfrey, who by now was a staff officer, had been sent to a far outpost held by Thorburn with a certain number of men, and there took command. A reconnaissance was necessary, and Thorburn went out for that purpose with over half of the available garrison of the post, having received written orders that he was not to engage the enemy unless he found himself absolutely surrounded. In the end Thorburn did engage the enemy with the result that practically he and his force were exterminated, but not before they had inflicted such a lesson on the said enemy that it sued for peace and has been great friends with the British power ever since.

First however a feeble attack was made on Godfrey's camp that he beat off without the loss of a single man, exaggerated accounts of which were telegraphed home representing it as a "Rorke's Drift defence."

Godfrey was heartbroken; he had loved this man as a brother, more indeed than brothers often love. And now Thorburn, his only friend, was dead. The Darkness had taken him, that impenetrable, devouring darkness out of which we come and into which we go. Religion told him he should not grieve, that Thorburn doubtless was much better off whither he had gone than he could ever have been on earth, although it was true the same religion said that he might be much worse off, since thither his failings would have followed him. Dismissing the latter possibility, how could he be happy in a new world, Godfrey wondered, having left all he cared for behind him and without possibility of communication with them?

In short, all the old problems of which he had not thought much since Miss Ogilvy died, came back to Godfrey with added force and left him wretched. Nor was he consoled by the sequel of the affair of which he was bound to report the facts. The gallant man who was dead was blamed unjustly for what had happened, as perhaps he deserved who had not succeeded, since those who set their blind eye to the telescope as Nelson did must justify their action by success.

Godfrey, on the other hand, who had done little but defeat an attack made by exhausted and dispirited men, was praised to the skies and found himself figuring as a kind of hero in the English Press, which after a long period of peace having lost all sense of proportion in such matters, was glad of anything that could be made to serve the purposes of sensation. Ultimately he was thanked by the Government of India, made a brevet-Major and decorated with the D.S.O., of all of which it may be said with truth that never were such honours received with less pleasure.

So much did he grieve over this unhappy business that his health was affected and being run down, in the end he took some sort of fever and was very ill indeed. When at length he recovered more or less he went before a Medical Board who ordered him promptly to England on six months' leave.

Most men would have rejoiced, but Godfrey did not. He had little wish to return to England, where, except Mrs. Parsons, there were none he desired to see, save one whom he was sworn not to see. This he could bear while they were thousands of miles apart, but to be in the same country with Isobel, in the same town perhaps, and forbidden to hear her voice or to touch her hand, how could he bear that? Still he had no choice in this matter, arranged by the hand of Fate, and went, reflecting that he would go to Lucerne and spent the time with the Pasteur. Perhaps even he would live in the beautiful house that Miss Ogilvy had left to him, or a corner of it, seeing that it was empty, for the tenants to whom it had been let had gone away.

So he started at the end of the first week in July, 1914.

When his ship reached Marseilles it was to find that the world was buzzing with strange rumours. There was talk of war in Europe. Russia was said to be mobilising; Germany was said to be mobilising; France was said to be mobilising; it was even rumoured that England might be drawn into some Titanic struggle of the nations. And yet no accurate information was obtainable. The English papers they saw were somewhat old and their reports vague in the extreme.

Much excited, like everyone else, Godfrey telegraphed to the India Office, asking leave to come home direct overland, which he could not do without permission since he was in command of a number of soldiers who were returning to England on furlough.

No answer came to his wire before his ship sailed, and therefore he was obliged to proceed by long sea. Still it had important consequences which at the moment he could not foresee. In the Bay the tidings that reached them by Marconigram were evidently so carefully censored that out of them they could make nothing, except that the Empire was filled with great doubt and anxiety, and that the world stood on the verge of such a war as had never been known in history.

At length they came to Southampton where the pilot-boat brought him a telegram ordering him to report himself without delay. Three hours later he was in London. At the India Office, where he was kept waiting a while, he was shown into the room of a prominent and harassed official who had some papers in front of him.

"You are Major Knight?" said the official. "Well, here is your record before me and it is good, very good indeed. But I see that you are on sick leave. Are you too ill for service?"

"No," answered Godfrey, "the voyage has set me up. I feel as well as ever I did."

"That's fortunate," answered the official, "but there is a doctor on the premises, and to make sure he shall have a look at you. Go down and see him, if you will, and then come back here with his report," and he rang a bell and gave some orders.

Within half an hour Godfrey was back in the room with a clean bill of health. The official read the certificate and remarked that he was going to send him over to the War Office, where he would make an appointment for him by telephone.

"What for, Sir?" asked Godfrey. "You see I am only just off my ship and very ignorant of the news."

"The news is, Major Knight, that we shall be at war with Germany before we are twelve hours older," was the solemn answer. "Officers are wanted, and we are giving every good man from India on whom we can lay our hands. They won't put you on the Staff, because you have everything to learn about European work, but I expect they will find you a billet in one of the expeditionary regiments. And now good-bye and good luck to you, for I have lots of men to see. By the way, I take it for granted that you volunteered for the job?"

"Of course," replied Godfrey simply, and went away to wander about the endless passages of the War Office till at length he discovered the man whom he must see.

A few tumultuous days went by, and he found himself upon a steamer crossing to France, attached to a famous English regiment.

The next month always remained in Godfrey's mind as a kind of nightmare in which he moved on plains stained the colour of blood, beneath a sky black with bellowing thunder and illumined occasionally by a blaze of splendour. It would be useless to attempt to set out the experience and adventures of the particular cavalry regiment to which he was attached as a major, since, notwithstanding their infinite variety, they were such as all shared whose glory it was to take part with what the Kaiser called the "contemptible little army" of England in the ineffable retreat from Mons, that retreat which saved France and Civilisation.

Godfrey played his part well, once or twice with heroism indeed, but what of that amid eighty thousand heroes? Back he staggered with the rest, exhausted, sleepless, fighting, fighting, fighting, his mind filled alternately with horror and with wonder, horror at the deeds to which men can sink and the general scheme of things that makes them possible, wonder at the heights to which they can rise when lifted by the inspiration of a great ideal and a holy cause. Death, he reflected, could not after all mean so very much to man, seeing how bravely it was met every minute of the day and night, and that the aspect of it, often so terrible, did but encourage others in like fashion to smile and die. But oh! what did it all mean, and who ruled this universe with such a flaming, blood-stained sword?

Then at last came the turn of the tide when the hungry German wolf was obliged to abandon that Paris which already he thought between his jaws and, a few days after it, the charge, the one splendid, perfect charge that consoled Godfrey and those with him for all which they had suffered, lost and feared. He was in command of the regiment now, for those superior to him had been killed, and he directed and accompanied that charge. They thundered on to the mass of the Germans who were retreating with no time to entrench or set entanglements, a gentle slope in front, and hard, clear ground beneath their horses' feet. They cut through them, they trod them down, they drove them by scores and hundreds into the stream beyond, till those two battalions, or what remained of them, were but a tangled, drowning mob. It was finished; the English squadron turned to retreat as had been ordered.

Then of a sudden Godfrey felt a dull blow. For a few moments consciousness remained to him. He called out some command about the retirement; it came to his mind that thus it was well to die in the moment of his little victory. After that—blackness!



When his sense returned to him he found himself lying in the curtained corner of a big room. At least he thought it was big because of the vast expanse of ceiling which he could see above the curtain rods and the sounds without, some of which seemed to come from a distance. There was a window, too, through which he caught sight of lawns and statues and formal trees. Just then the curtain was drawn, and there appeared a middle-aged woman dressed in white, looking very calm, very kind and very spotless, who started a little when she saw that his eyes were open and that his face was intelligent.

"Where am I?" he asked, and was puzzled to observe that the sound of his voice seemed feeble and far away.

"In the hospital at Versailles," she answered in a pleasant voice.

"Indeed!" he murmured. "It occurred to me that it might be Heaven or some place of the sort."

"If you looked through the curtain you wouldn't call it Heaven," she said with a sigh, adding, "No, Major, you were near to 'going west,' very near, but you never got to the gates of Heaven."

"I can't remember," he murmured again.

"Of course you can't, so don't try, for you see you got it in the head, a bit of shell; and a nice operation, or rather operations, they had over you. If it wasn't for that clever surgeon—but there, never mind."

"Shall I recover?"

"Of course you will. We have had no doubt about that for the last week; you have been here nearly three, you know; only, you see, we thought you might be blind, something to do with the nerves of the eyes. But it appears that isn't so. Now be quiet, for I can't stop talking to you with two dying just outside, and another whom I hope to save."

"One thing, Nurse—about the war. Have the Germans got Paris?"

"That's a silly question, Major, which makes me think you ain't so right as I believed. If those brutes had Paris do you think you would be at Versailles? Or, at any rate, that I should? Don't you bother about the war. It's all right, or as right as it is likely to be for many a long day."

Then she went.

A week later Godfrey was allowed to get out of bed and was even carried to sit in the autumn sunshine among other shattered men. Now he learned all there was to know; that the German rush had been stayed, that they had been headed off from Calais, and that the armies were entrenching opposite to each other and preparing for the winter, the Allied cause having been saved, as it were, by a miracle, at any rate for the while. He was still very weak, with great pain in his head, and could not read at all, which grieved him.

So the time went by, till at last he was told that he was to be sent to England, as his bed was wanted and he could recover there as well as in France. Two days later he started in a hospital train and suffered much upon the journey, although it was broken for a night at Boulogne. Still he came safely to London, and was taken to a central hospital where next day several doctors held a consultation over him. When it was over they asked him if he had friends in London and wished to stay there. He replied that he had no friends except an old nurse at Hampstead, if she were still there, and that he did not like London. Then there was talk among them, and the word Torquay was mentioned. The head doctor seemed to agree, but as he was leaving, changed his mind.

"Too long a journey," he said, "it would knock him up. Give me that list. Here, this place will do; quite close and got up regardless, I am told, for she's very rich. That's what he wants—comfort and first-class food," and with a nod to Godfrey, who was listening in an idle fashion, quite indifferent as to his destination, he was gone.

Next day they carried him off in an ambulance through the crowded Strand, and presently he found himself at Liverpool Street, where he was put into an invalid carriage. He asked the orderly where he was going, but the man did not seem to know, or had forgotten the name. So troubling no more about it he took a dose of medicine as he had been ordered, and presently went to sleep, as no doubt it was intended that he should do. When he woke up again it was to find himself being lifted from another ambulance into a house which was very dark, perhaps because of the lighting orders, for now night had fallen. He was carried in a chair up some stairs into a very nice bedroom, and there put to bed by two men. They went away, leaving him alone.

Something puzzled him about the place; at first he could not think what it was. Then he knew. The smell of it was familiar to him. He did not recognise the room, but the smell he did seem to recognise, though being weak and shaken he could not connect it with any particular house or locality. Now there were voices in the passage, and he knew that he must be dreaming, for the only one that he could really hear sounded exactly like to that of old Mrs. Parsons. He smiled at the thought and shut his eyes. The voice that was like to that of Mrs. Parsons died away, saying as it went:

"No, I haven't got the names, but I dare say they are downstairs. I'll go and look."

The door opened and he heard someone enter, a woman this time by her tread. He did not see, both because his eyes were still almost closed and for the reason that the electric light was heavily shaded. So he just lay there, wondering quite vaguely where he was and who the woman might be. She came near to the bed and looked down at him, for he heard her dress rustle as she bent. Then he became aware of a very strange sensation. He felt as though something were flowing from that woman to him, some strange and concentrated power of thought which was changing into a kind of agony of joy. The woman above him began to breathe quickly, in sighs as it were, and he knew that she was stirred; he knew that she was wondering.

"I cannot see his face, I cannot see his face!" she whispered in a strained, unnatural tone. Then with some swift movement she lifted the shade that was over the lamp. He, too, turned his head and opened his eyes.

Oh, God! there over him leant Isobel, clad in a nurse's robes—yes, Isobel—unless he were mad.

Next moment he knew that he was not mad, for she said one word, only one, but it was enough.

"Godfrey!"

"Isobel!" he gasped. "Is it you?"

She made no answer, at least in words. Only she bent down and kissed him on the lips.

"You mustn't do that," he whispered. "Remember—our promise?"

"I remember," she answered. "Am I likely to forget? It was that you would never see me nor come into this house while my father lived. Well, he died a month ago." Then a doubt struck her, and she added swiftly: "Didn't you want to come here?"

"Want, Isobel! What else have I wanted for ten years? But I didn't know; my coming here was just an accident."

"Are there such things as accidents?" she queried. "Was it an accident when twenty years ago I found you sleeping in the schoolroom at the Abbey and kissed you on the forehead, or when I found you sleeping a few minutes ago twenty whole years later—?" and she paused.

"And kissed me—not upon the forehead," said Godfrey reflective, adding, "I never knew about that first kiss. Thank you for it."

"Not upon the forehead," she repeated after him, colouring a little. "You see I have faith and take a great deal for granted. If I should be mistaken——"

"Oh! don't trouble about that," he broke in, "because you know it couldn't be. Ten years, or ten thousand, and it would make no difference."

"I wonder," she mused, "oh! how I wonder. Do you think it possible that we shall be living ten thousand years hence?"

"Quite," he answered with cheerful assurance, "much more possible than that I should be living to-day. What's ten thousand years? It's quite a hundred thousand since I saw you."

"Don't laugh at me," she exclaimed.

"Why not, dear, when there's nothing in the whole world at which I wouldn't laugh at just now? although I would rather look at you. Also I wasn't laughing, I was loving, and when one is loving very much, the truth comes out."

"Then you really think it true—about the ten thousand years, I mean?"

"Of course, dear," he answered, and this time his voice was serious enough. "Did we not tell each other yonder in the Abbey that ours was the love eternal?"

"Yes, but words cannot make eternity."

"No, but thoughts and the will behind them can, for we reap what we sow."

"Why do you say that?" she asked quickly.

"I can't tell you, except because I know that it is so. We come to strange conclusions out yonder, where only death seems to be true and all the rest a dream. What we call the real and the unreal get mixed."

A kind of wave of happiness passed through her, so obvious that it was visible to the watching Godfrey.

"If you believe it I dare say that it is so, for you always had what they call vision, had you not?" Then without waiting for an answer, she went on, "What nonsense we are talking. Don't you understand, Godfrey, that I am quite old?"

"Yes," he answered, "getting on; six months younger than I am, I think."

"Oh! it's different with a man. Another dozen years and I'm finished."

"Possibly, except for that eternity before you."

"Also," she continued, "I am even——"

"Even more beautiful than you were ten years ago, at any rate to me," he broke in.

"You foolish Godfrey," she murmured, and moved a little away from him.

Just then the door opened, and Mrs. Parsons, looking very odd in a nurse's dress with the cap awry upon her grey hair, entered, carrying a bit of paper.

"The hunt I had!" she began; "that silly, new-fangled kind of a girl-clerk having stuck the paper away under the letter O—for officers, you know, Miss—in some fancy box of hers, and then gone off to tea. Here are the names, but I can't see without my specs."

At this point something in the attitude of the two struck her, something that her instincts told her was uncommon, and she stood irresolute. Isobel stepped to her as though to take the list, and, bending down, whispered into her ear.

"What?" said Mrs. Parsons. "Surely I didn't understand; you know I'm getting deaf as well as blind. Say the name again."

Isobel obeyed, still in a whisper.

"Him!" exclaimed the old woman, "him! Our Godfrey, and you've been and let on who you were—you who call yourself a nursing Commandant? Why, I dare say you'll be the death of him. Out you go, Miss, anyway; I'll take charge of this case for the present," and as it seemed to Godfrey, watching from the far corner, literally she bundled Isobel from the room.

Then she shut and locked the door. Coming to the bedside she knelt down rather stiffly, looked at him for a while to make sure, and kissed him, not once, but many times.

"So you have come back, my dear," she said, "and only half dead. Well, we won't have no young woman pushing between you and me just at present, Commandant or not. Time enough for love-making when you are stronger. Oh! and I never thought to see you again. There must be a good God somewhere after all, although He did make them Germans."

Then again she fell to kissing and blessing him, her hot tears dropping on his face and upsetting him ten times as much as Isobel had done.

Since in this topsy-turvy world often things work by contraries, oddly enough no harm came to Godfrey from these fierce excitements. Indeed he slept better than he had done since he found his mind again, and awoke, still weak of course, but without any temperature or pains in his head. Now it was that there began the most blissful period of all his life. Isobel, when she had recovered her balance, made him understand that he was a patient, and that exciting talk or acts must be avoided. He on his part fell in with her wishes, and indeed was well content to do so. For a while he wanted nothing more than just to lie there and watch her moving in and out of his room, with his food or flowers, or whatever it might be, for a burst of bad weather prevented him from going out of doors. Then, as he strengthened she began to talk to him (which Mrs. Parsons did long before that event), telling him all that for years he had longed to know; no, not all, but some things. Among other matters she described to him the details of her father's end, which occurred in a very characteristic fashion.

"You see, dear," she said, "as he grew older his passion for money-making increased more and more; why, I am sure I cannot say, seeing that Heaven knows he had enough."

"Yes," said Godfrey, "I suppose you are a very rich woman."

She nodded, saying: "So rich that I don't know how rich, for really I haven't troubled even to read all the figures, and as yet they are not complete. Moreover, I believe that soon I shall be much richer. I'll tell you why presently. The odd thing is, too, that my father died intestate, so I get every farthing. I believe he meant to make a will with some rather peculiar provisions that perhaps you can guess. But this will was never made."

"Why not?" asked Godfrey.

"Because he died first, that's all. It was this way. He, or rather his firm, which is only another name for him, for he owned three-fourths of the capital, got some tremendous shipping contract with the Government arising out of the war, that secures an enormous profit to them; how much I can't tell you, but hundreds and hundreds of thousands of pounds. He had been very anxious about this contract, for his terms were so stiff that the officials who manage such affairs hesitated about signing them. At last one day after a long and I gather, stormy interview with I don't know whom, in the course of which some rather strong language seems to have been used, the contract was signed and delivered to the firm. My father came home to this house with a copy of it in his pocket. He was very triumphant, for he looked at the matter solely from a business point of view, not at all from that of the country. Also he was very tired, for he had aged much during the last few years, and suffered occasionally from heart attacks. To keep himself up he drank a great deal of wine at dinner, first champagne and then the best part of a bottle of port. This made him talkative, and he kept me sitting there to listen to him while he boasted, poor man, of how he had 'walked round' the officials who thought themselves so clever, but never saw some trap which he had set for them."

"And what did you do?" asked Godfrey.

"You know very well what I did. I grew angry, I could not help it, and told him I thought it was shameful to make money wrongfully out of the country at such a time, especially when he did not want it at all. Then he was furious and answered that he did want it, to support the peerage which he was going to get. He said also," she added slowly, "that I was 'an ignorant, interfering vixen,' yes, that is what he called me, a vixen, who had always been a disappointment to him and thwarted his plans. 'However,' he went on, 'as you think so little of my hard-earned money, I'll take care that you don't have more of it than I can help. I am not going to leave it to be wasted on silly charities by a sour old maid, for that's what you are, since you can't get hold of your precious parson's son, who I hope will be sent to the war and killed. I'll see the lawyers to-morrow, and make a will, which I hope you'll find pleasant reading one day.'

"I answered that he might make what will he liked, and left the room, though he tried to stop me.

"About half an hour later I saw the butler running about the garden where I was, looking for me in the gloom, and heard him calling: 'Come to Sir John, miss. Come to Sir John!'

"I went in and there was my father fallen forward on the dining-room table, with blood coming from his lips, though I believe this was caused by a crushed wineglass. His pocket-book was open beneath him, in which he had been writing figures of his estate, and, I think, headings for the will he meant to make, but these I could not read since the faint pencilling was blotted out with blood. He was quite dead from some kind of a stroke followed by heart failure, as the doctors said."

"Is that all the pleasant story?" asked Godfrey.

"Yes, except that there being no will I inherited everything, or shall do so. I tried to get that contract cancelled, but could not; first, because having once made it the Government would not consent, since to do so would have been a reflection on those concerned, and secondly, for the reason that the other partners in the shipping business objected. So we shall have to give it back in some other way."

Godfrey looked at her, and said:

"You meant to say that you will have to give it back."

"I don't know what I meant," she answered, colouring; "but having said we, I think I will be like the Government and stick to it. That is, unless you object very much, my dear."

"Object! I object!" and taking the hand that was nearest to him, he covered it with kisses. As he did so he noted that for the first time she wore the little ring with turquoise hearts upon her third finger, the ring that so many years before he had bought at Lucerne, the ring that through Mrs. Parsons he had sent her in the pill-box on the evening of their separation.

This was the only form of engagement that ever passed between them, the truth being that from the moment he entered the place it was all taken for granted, not only by themselves, but by everyone in the house, including the wounded. With this development of an intelligent instinct, it is possible that Mrs. Parsons had something to do.



CHAPTER XIX

MARRIAGE

In that atmosphere of perfect bliss Godfrey's cure was quick. For bliss it was, save only that there was another bliss beyond to be attained. Remember that this man, now approaching middle life, had never drunk of the cup of what is known as love upon the earth.

Some might answer that such is the universal experience; that true, complete love has no existence, except it be that love of God to which a few at last attain, since in what we know as God completeness and absolute unity can be found alone. Other loves all have their flaws, with one exception perhaps, that of the love of the dead which fondly we imagine to be unchangeable. For the rest passion, however exalted, passes or at least becomes dull with years; the most cherished children grow up, and in so doing, by the law of Nature, grow away; friends are estranged and lost in their own lives.

Upon the earth there is no perfect love; it must be sought elsewhere, since having the changeful shadows, we know there is a sky wherein shines the sun that casts them.

Godfrey, as it chanced, omitting Isobel, had walked little even in these sweet shadows. There were but three others for whom he had felt devotion in all his days, Mrs. Parsons, his tutor, Monsieur Boiset, and his friend, Arthur Thorburn, who was gone. Therefore to him Isobel was everything. As a child he had adored her; as a woman she was his desire, his faith and his worship.

If this were so with him, still more was it the case with Isobel, who in truth cared for no other human being. Something in her nature prevented her from contracting violent female friendships, and to all men, except a few of ability, each of them old enough to be her father, she was totally indifferent; indeed most of them repelled her. On Godfrey, and Godfrey alone, from the first moment she saw him as a child she had poured all the deep treasure of her heart. He was at once her divinity and her other self, the segment that completed her life's circle, without which it was nothing but a useless, broken ring.

So much did this seem to her to be so, that notwithstanding her lack of faith in matters beyond proof and knowledge, she never conceived of this passion of hers as having had a beginning, or of being capable of an end. This contradictory woman would argue against the possibility of any future existence, yet she was quite certain that her love for Godfrey had a future existence, and indeed one that was endless. When at length he put it to her that her attitude was most illogical, since that which was dead and dissolved could not exist in any place or shape, she thought for a while and replied quietly:

"Then I must be wrong."

"Wrong in what?" asked Godfrey.

"In supposing that we do not live after death. The continuance of our love I know to be beyond any doubt, and if it involves our continuance as individual entities—well, then we continue, that is all."

"We might continue as a single entity," he suggested.

"Perhaps," she answered, "and if so this would be better still, for it must be impossible to lose one another while that remained alive, comprising both."

Thus, and in these few words, although she never became altogether orthodox, or took quite the same view of such mysteries as did Godfrey, Isobel made her great recantation, for which probably there would never have been any need had she been born in different surroundings and found some other spiritual guide in youth than Mr. Knight. As the cruelties and the narrow bitterness of the world had bred unfaith in her, so did supreme love breed faith, if of an unusual sort, since she learned that without the faith her love must die, and the love she knew to be immortal. Therefore the existence of that living love presupposed all the rest, and convinced her, which in one of her obstinate nature nothing else could possibly have done, no, not if she had seen a miracle. Also this love of hers was so profound and beautiful that she felt its true origin and ultimate home must be elsewhere than on the earth.

That was why she consented to be married in church, somewhat to Godfrey's surprise.



In due course, having practically recovered his health, Godfrey appeared before a Board in London which passed him as fit for service, but gave him a month's leave. With this document he returned to Hawk's Hall, and there showed it to Isobel.

"And when the month is up?" she asked, looking at him.

"Then I suppose I shall have to join my regiment, unless they send me somewhere else."

"A month is a very short time," she went on, still looking at him and turning a little pale.

"Yes, dear, but lots can happen in it, as we found out in France. For instance," he added, with a little hesitation, "we can get married, that is, if you wish."

"You know very well, Godfrey, that I have wished it for quite ten years."

"And you know very well, Isobel, that I have wished it—well, ever since I understood what marriage was. How about to-morrow?" he exclaimed, after a pause.

She laughed, and shook her head.

"I believe, Godfrey, that some sort of license is necessary, and it is past post time. Also it would look scarcely decent; all these people would laugh at us. Also, as there is a good deal of property concerned, I must make some arrangements."

"What arrangements?" he asked.

She laughed again. "That is my affair; you know I am a great supporter of Woman's Rights."

"Oh! I see," he replied vaguely, "to keep it all free from the husband's control, &c."

"Yes, Godfrey, that's it. What a business head you have. You should join the shipping firm after the war."

Then they settled to be married on that day week, after which Isobel suggested that he should take up his abode at the Abbey House, where the clergyman, a bachelor, would be very glad to have him as a guest. When Godfrey inquired why, she replied blandly because his room was wanted for another patient, he being now cured, and that therefore he had no right to stop there.

"Oh! I see. How selfish of me," said Godfrey, and went off to arrange matters with the clergyman, a friendly and accommodating young man, with the result that on this night once more he slept in the room he had occupied as a boy. For her part Isobel telephoned, first to her dressmaker, and secondly to the lawyer who was winding up her father's estate, requesting these important persons to come to see her on the morrow.

They came quickly, since Isobel was too valuable a client to be neglected, arriving by the same train, with the result that the lawyer was kept waiting an hour and a half by the dressmaker, a fact which he remembered in his bill. When at last his turn came, Isobel did not detain him long.

"I am going to be married," she said, "on the twenty-fourth to Major Godfrey Knight of the Indian Cavalry. Will you kindly prepare two documents, the first to be signed before my marriage, and the second, a will, immediately after it, since otherwise it would be invalidated by that change in my condition."

The lawyer stared at her, since so much legal knowledge was not common among his lady clients, and asked for instructions as to what the documents were to set out.

"They will be very simple," said Isobel. "The first, a marriage settlement, will settle half my income free of my control upon my future husband during our joint lives. The second, that is the will, will leave to him all my property, real and personal."

"I must point out to you, Miss Blake," said the astonished lawyer, "that these provisions are very unusual. Does Major Knight bring large sums into settlement?"

"I don't think so," she answered. "His means are quite moderate, and if they were not, it would never occur to him to do anything of the sort, as he understands nothing about money. Also circumstanced as I am, it does not matter in the least."

"Your late father would have taken a different view," sniffed the lawyer.

"Possibly," replied Isobel, "for our views varied upon most points. While he was alive I gave way to his, to my great loss and sorrow. Now that he is dead I follow my own."

"Well, that is definite, Miss Blake, and of course your wishes must be obeyed. But as regards this will, do not think me indelicate for mentioning it, but there might be children."

"I don't think you at all indelicate. Why should I at over thirty years of age? I have considered the point. If we are blessed with any children, and I should predecease him, my future husband will make such arrangements for their welfare as he considers wise and just. I have every confidence in his judgment, and if he should happen to die intestate, which I think very probable, they would inherit equally. There is enough for any number of them."

"Unless he loses or spends it," groaned the lawyer.

"He is much more likely to save it from some mistaken sense of duty, and to live entirely on what he has of his own," remarked Isobel. "If so, it cannot be helped, and no doubt the poor will benefit. Now if you thoroughly understand what I wish done, I think that is all. I have to see the dressmaker again, so good-bye."

"Executors?" gasped the lawyer.

"Public Trustee," said Isobel, over her shoulder.

"They say that she is one of these Suffragette women, although she keeps it dark. Well, I can believe it. Anyway, this officer is tumbling into honey, and there's no fool like a woman in love," said the lawyer to himself as he packed his bag of papers.

Isobel was quite right. The question of settlements never even occurred to Godfrey. He was aware, however, that it is usual for a bridegroom to make the bride a present, and going to London, walked miserably up and down Bond Street looking into windows until he was tired. At one moment he fixed his affections upon an old Queen Anne porringer, which his natural taste told him to be quite beautiful; but having learned from the dealer that it was meant for the mixing of infant's pap, he retired abashed. Almost next door he saw in a jeweller's window a necklace of small pearls priced at three hundred pounds, and probably worth about half that amount. Having quite a handsome balance at his back, he came to the conclusion that he could afford this and, going in, bought it at once, oblivious of the fact that Isobel already had ropes of pearls the size of marrowfat peas. However, she was delighted with it, especially when she saw what it had cost him, for he had never thought to cut the sale ticket from the necklace. It was those pearls, and not the marrowfat peas, that Isobel wore upon her wedding day. Save for the little ring with the two turquoise hearts, these were her only ornament.

A question arose as to where the honeymoon, or so much as would remain of one, was to be spent. Godfrey would have liked to go to Lucerne and visit the Pasteur, but as this could not be managed in war time, suggested London.

"Why London?" exclaimed Isobel.

"Only because most ladies like theatres, though I confess I hate them myself."

"You silly man," she answered. "Do you suppose, when we can have only a few days together, that I want to waste time in theatres?"

In the end it was settled that they would go to London for a night, and then on to Cornwall, which they hoped fondly might be warm at that time of year.



So at last, on the twenty-fourth day of December of that fateful year 1914, they were married in the Abbey Church. Isobel's uncle, the one with whom she had stayed in Mexico, and who had retired now from the Diplomatic Service, gave her away, and a young cousin of hers was the sole bridesmaid, for the ceremony was of the sort called a "war wedding." Her dress, however, was splendid of its kind, some rich thing of flowing broidered silk with a veil of wondrous lace.

Either from accident or by design, in general effect it much resembled that of the Plantagenet lady which once she had copied from the brass. Perhaps, being dissatisfied with her former effort, she determined to recap it on a more splendid scale, or perhaps it was a chance. At any rate, the veil raised in two points from her head, fell down like that of the nameless lady, while from her elbows long narrow sleeves hung almost to the ground. Beautiful Isobel never was, but in this garb, with happiness shining in her eyes, her tall, well-made form looked imposing and even stately, an effect that was heightened by her deliberate and dignified movements. The great church was crowded, for the news of this wedding had spread far and wide, and its romantic character attracted people both from the neighbouring villages and the little town.

Set in the splendid surroundings of the old Abbey, through the painted windows of which gleamed the winter sun, Godfrey in his glittering Indian uniform and orders, and his bride in her quaint, rich dress, made a striking pair at the altar rail. Indeed it is doubtful whether since hundreds of years ago the old Crusader and his fair lady, whose ashes were beneath their feet, stood where they stood for this same purpose of marriage, clad in coat of mail and gleaming silk, a nobler-looking couple had been wed in that ancient fane.

Oddly enough, with the strange inconsequence of the human mind, especially in moments of suppressed excitement, it was of this nameless lady and her lord that Godfrey kept thinking throughout the service, once more wondering who they were and what was their story. He remembered too how the graves of that unknown pair had been connected with his fortunes and those of Isobel. Here it was that they plighted the troth which now they were about to fulfil. Here it was that he had bidden her farewell before he went to Switzerland. He could see her now as she was then, tall and slender in her white robe, and the red ray of sunshine gleaming like a splash of blood upon her breast. He glanced at her by his side as she turned towards him, and behold! there it shone again, splendid yet ominous.

He shivered a little at the sight of it—he knew not why—and was glad when a dense black snow-cloud hid the face of the sun and killed it.

It was over at last, and they were man and wife.

"Do these words and vows and ceremonies make any difference to you?" she whispered as they walked side by side down the church, the observed of all observers. "They do not to me. I feel as though all the rites in the world would be quite powerless and without meaning in face of the fact of our eternal unity."

It was a queer little speech for her to make, with its thought and balance; Godfrey often reflected afterwards, expressing as it did a great truth so far as they were concerned, since no ceremonial, however hallowed, could increase their existing oneness or take away therefrom. At the moment, however, he scarcely understood it, and only smiled in reply.

Then they went into the vestry and signed their names, and everything was over. Here Godfrey's former trustee, General Cubitte, grown very old now, but as bustling and emphatic as of yore, who signed the book as one of the witnesses, buttonholed him. At some length he explained how he had been to see an eminent swell at the War Office, a "dug-out" who was an old friend of his, and impressed upon him his, Godfrey's, extraordinary abilities as a soldier, pointing out that he ought at once to be given command of a regiment, and how the eminent swell had promised that he would see to it forthwith. Oh! if he had only known, he would not have thanked him.

At last they started for the motor-car, which was to drive them in pomp three hundred yards to the Hall. Some delay occurred. Another motor-car at the church gate would not start, and had to be drawn out of the way. Three or four of the nurses from the hospital and certain local ladies surrounded Isobel, and burst into talk and congratulations, thus separating her from Godfrey.

Overhearing complimentary remarks about himself, he drew back a little from the porch into the church which had now emptied. As he stood there someone tapped him on the shoulder. The touch disturbed him; it was unpleasant to him and he turned impatiently to see from whom it came. There in front of him, bundled up in a rusty black cloak of which the hood covered the head, was a short fat woman. Her face was hidden, but from the cavernous recesses of the hood two piercing black eyes shone like to those of a tiger in its den. After all those years Godfrey recognised them at once; indeed subconsciously he had known who had touched him even before he turned. It was Madame Riennes.

"Ah!" she said, in her hateful, remembered voice, "so my little Godfrey who has grown such a big Godfrey now—yes, big in every way, had recognition of his dear Godmamma, did he? Oh! do not deny it; I saw you jump with joy. Well, I knew what was happening—never mind how I knew—and though I am so poor now, I travelled here to assist and give my felicitations. Eleanor, too, she sends hers, though you guess of what kind they are, for remember, as I told you long ago, speerits are just as jealous as we women, because, you see, they were women before they were speerits."

"Thank you," broke in Godfrey; "I am afraid I must be going."

"Oh! yes. You are in a great hurry, for now you have got the plum, my Godfrey, have you not, and want to eat it? Well, I have a message for you, suck it hard, for very, very soon you come to the stone, which you know is sharp and cold with no taste, and must be thrown away. Oh! something make me say this too; I know not what. Perhaps that stone must be planted, not thrown away; yes, I think it must be planted, and that it will grow into the most beautiful of plum trees in another land."

She threw back her hood, showing her enormous forehead and flabby, sunken face, which looked as though she had lived for years in a cellar, and yet had about it an air of inspiration. "Yes," she went on, "I see that tree white with blossom. I see it bending with the golden fruit—thousands upon thousands of fruits. Oh! Godfrey, it is the Tree of Life, and underneath it sit you and that lady who looks like a queen, and whom you love so dear, and look into each other's eyes for ever and for ever, because you see that tree immortal do not grow upon the earth, my Godfrey."

The horrible old woman made him afraid, especially did her last words make him afraid, because he who was experienced in such matters knew that she had come with no intention of uttering them, that they had burst from her lips in a sudden semi-trance such as overtakes her sisterhood from time to time. He knew what that meant, that Death had marked them, and that they were called elsewhere, he or Isobel, or both.

"I must be going," he repeated.

"Yes, yes, you must be going—you who are going so far. The hungry fish must go after the bait, must it not, and oh! the hook it does not see. But, my leetle big Godfrey, one moment. Your loving old Godmamma, she tumble on the evil day ever since that cursed old Pasteur"—here her pale face twisted and her eyes grew wicked—"let loose the law-dogs on me. I want money, my godson. Here is an address," and she thrust a piece of paper upon him.

He threw it down and stamped on it. In his pocket was a leather case full of bank-notes. He drew out a handful of them and held them to her. She snatched them as a hungry hawk snatches meat, with a fierce and curious swiftness.

Then at last he escaped, and in another minute, amidst the cheers of the crowd, was driving away at the side of the stately Isobel.

At the Hall, where one of the wards had been cleared for the purpose, there was a little informal reception, at which for a while Godfrey found himself officiating alone, since Isobel had disappeared with General Cubitte and the brother officer who had acted as his best man. When at length they returned he asked her where she had been, rather sharply perhaps, for his nerves were on edge.

"To see to some business with the lawyer," she answered.

"What business, dear?" he inquired. "I thought you settled all that this morning?"

"It could not be settled this morning, Godfrey, because a will can only be signed after marriage."

"Good gracious!" he exclaimed. "Give me a glass of champagne."

An hour later they were motoring to London alone, at last alone, and to this pair Heaven opened its seventh door.

They dined in the private sitting-room of the suit which under the inspiration of Isobel he had taken at a London hotel, and then after the curious-eyed waiters had cleared the table, sat together in front of the fire, hand in hand, but not talking very much. At length Isobel rose and they embraced each other.

"I am going to bed now," she said; "but before you come, and perhaps we forget about such matters, I want you to kneel down with me and say a prayer."

He obeyed as a child might, though wondering, for somehow he had never connected Isobel and Prayer in his mind. There they knelt in front of the fire, as reverently as though it burned upon an altar, and Isobel said her prayer aloud. It ran thus:

"O Unknown God Whom always I have sought and Whom now I think that I have found, or am near to finding; O Power that sent me forth to taste of Life and gather Knowledge, and Who at Thine own hour wilt call me back again, hear the prayer of Isobel and of Godfrey her lover. This is what they ask of Thee: that be their time together on the earth long or short, it may endure for ever in the lives and lands beyond the earth. They ask also that all their sins, known and unknown, great or small, may be forgiven them, and that with Thy gifts they may do good, and that if children come to them, they may be blessed in such fashion as Thou seest well, and afterwards endure with them through all the existences to be. O Giver of Life and Love Eternal, hear this, the solemn marriage prayer of Godfrey and of Isobel."



Then she rose and with one long look, left him, seeming to his eyes no more a woman, as ten thousand women are, but a very Fire of spiritual love incarnate in a veil of flesh.



CHAPTER XX

ORDERS

Godfrey and his wife never went to Cornwall after all, for on Christmas Day the weather turned so bad and travelling was so difficult that they determined to stop where they were for a few days.

As for them the roof of this London hotel had become synonymous with that of the crystal dome of heaven, this did not matter in the least. There they sat in their hideous, over-gilded, private sitting-room, or, when the weather was clear enough, went for walks in the Park, and once to the South Kensington Museum, where they enjoyed themselves very thoroughly.

It was on the fourth morning after their marriage that the blow fell. Godfrey had waked early, and lay watching his wife at his side. The grey light from the uncurtained window, which they had opened to air the over-heated room, revealed her in outline but not in detail and made her fine face mysterious, framed as it was in her yellow hair. He watched it with a kind of rapture, till at length she sighed and stirred, then began to murmur in her sleep.

"My darling," she whispered, "oh! my darling, how have I lived without you? Well, that is over, since alive or dead we can never be parted more, not really—not really!"

Then she opened her grey eyes and stretched out her arms to receive him, and he was glad, for he seemed to be listening to that which he was not meant to hear.

A little later there came a knocking at the door, and a page boy's squeaky voice without said:

"Telegram for you, Sir."

Godfrey called to him to put it down, but Isobel turned pale and shivered.

"What can it be?" she said, clasping him. "No one knows our address."

"Oh, yes, they do," he answered. "You forget you telephoned to the Hall yesterday afternoon about the hospital business you had forgotten and gave our number, which would be quite enough."

"So I did, like a fool," she exclaimed, looking as though she were going to cry.

"Don't be frightened, dear," he said. "I dare say it is nothing. You see we have no one to lose."

"No, no, I feel sure it is a great deal and—we have each other. Read it quickly and get the thing over."

So he rose and fetched the yellow envelope which reposed upon Isobel's boots outside the door. A glance showed him that it was marked "official," and then his heart, too, began to sink. Returning to the bed, he switched on the electric light and opened the envelope.

"There's enough of it," he said, drawing out three closely written sheets.

"Read, read it!" answered Isobel.

So he read. It was indeed a very long telegram, one of such as are commonly sent at the expense of the country, and it came from the War Office. The gist of it was that attempts had been made to communicate with him at an address he had given in Cornwall, but the messages had been returned, and finally inquiry at Hawk's Hall had given a clue. He was directed to report himself "early to-morrow" (the telegram had been sent off on the previous night) to take up an appointment which would be explained to him. There was, it added, no time to lose, as the ship was due to sail within twenty-four hours.

"There!" said Isobel, "I knew it was something of the sort. This," she added with a flash of inspiration, "is the result of the meddling of that old General Cubitte. You see it must be a distant appointment, or they would not talk about the ship being due to sail."

"I dare say," he answered as cheerfully as he could. "Such things are to be expected in these times, are they not?"

"Too bad!" she went on, "at any rate they might have let you have your leave."

Then they rose because they must and made pretence to eat some breakfast, after which they departed in one of Isobel's motors, which had been summoned by telephone from her London house, to the Department indicated in the telegram.

They need not have hurried, since the important person whom Godfrey must see did not arrive for a full hour, during all which time Isobel sat waiting in the motor. However, when he appeared he was very gracious.

"Oh! yes," he said, "you are Major Knight, and we have a mutual friend in old General Cubitte. In fact it was he who put an idea into our heads, for which, as I understand you are just married—a pretty hunt you gave us, by the way—perhaps you won't altogether bless him, since otherwise, as you are only just recovered from your wounds, I have no doubt we could have given you a month or two extra leave. However, I know you are very keen, for I've looked up your record, and private affairs must give way, mustn't they? Also, as it happens, Mrs. Knight need not be anxious, as we are not going to send you into any particular danger; I dare say you won't see a shot fired.

"Look here, Major, you have been a Staff officer, haven't you, and it is reported of you that you always got on extremely well with natives, and especially in some semi-political billets which you have held when you had to negotiate with their chiefs. Well, to cut it short, a man of the kind is wanted in East Africa, coming out direct from home with military authority. He will have to keep in touch with the big chiefs in our own territory and arrange for them to supply men for working or fighting, etc., and if possible, open negotiations with those in German territory and win them over to us. Further, as you know, there are an enormous number of Indians settled in East Africa, with whom you would be particularly qualified to deal. We should look to you to make the most of these in any way required. You see, the appointment is a special one, and if the work be well done, as I have no doubt it will be, I am almost sure," he added significantly, "that the results to the officer concerned will be special also.

"Now, I don't ask you if you decline the appointment, because we are certain in time of war you will not do so, and I think that's all, except that you will be accredited ostensibly to the staff of the General in command in East Africa, and also receive private instructions, of which the General and the local Governments will have copies. Now, do you understand everything, especially that your powers will be very wide and that you will have to act largely on your own discretion?"

"I think so, Sir," said Godfrey, concealing the complete confusion of his mind as well as he was able. "At any rate, I shall pick things up as I go along."

"Yes, that's the right spirit—pick things up as you go on, as we are all doing in this war. I have to pick 'em up, I can tell you. And now I won't keep you any longer, for, you see, you'll have to hustle. I believe a special boat for East Africa with stores, etc., sails to-morrow morning, so you'll have to take the last train to Southampton. An officer will meet you at Waterloo with your instructions, and if he misses you, will go on down to the boat. Also, you will have details of your pay and allowances, which will be liberal, though I am told you are not likely to want money in future. So good-bye and good luck to you. You must report officially through the General or the local Governors, but you will also be able to write privately to us. Indeed, please remember that we shall expect you to do so."

So Godfrey went, but as he neared the door the big man called after him:

"By the way, I forgot to congratulate you. No, no, I don't mean on your marriage, but on your promotion. You've been informed, haven't you? Well, it will be gazetted to-morrow or in a day or two, and letters will be sent to you with the other papers."

"What promotion?" asked Godfrey.

"Oh! to be a colonel, of course. You did very well out there in France, you know, and it is thought advisable that the officer undertaking this special work should have a colonel's rank, just to begin with. Good-bye."

So Godfrey went, and said vaguely to the waiting Isobel:

"I'm afraid, dear, that I shall have to ask you to help me to do some shopping. I think there are some stores near here. We had better drive to them."

"Tell me everything," said Isobel.

So he told her, and when he had finished she said slowly:

"It is bad enough, but I suppose it might be worse. Will they let me go with you to Southampton?"

"I expect so," he answered. "At any rate, we will try it on. I think it is an ordinary train, and you have a right to take a ticket."

Then they shopped, all day they shopped, with the result, since money can do much, that when they reached Waterloo his baggage containing everything needful, or at least nearly everything, was already waiting for him. So was the messenger with the promised papers, including a formal communication notifying to him that he was now a lieutenant-colonel.

"And to think that they have painted 'Major' on those tin cases!" said Isobel regretfully, for no objection had been raised to her accompanying Godfrey, with whom she was seated in a reserved carriage.

They reached Southampton about midnight, and on Godfrey presenting himself and asking when the boat sailed he was informed that this was uncertain, but probably within the next week. Then remembering all he had gone through that day, he swore as a man will, but Isobel rejoiced inwardly, oh! how she rejoiced, though all she said was that it would give him time to complete his shopping.

Save for the advancing shadow of separation and a constant stream of telegrams and telephone messages to and from his chiefs in London, which occupied many of the hours, these were very happy days, especially as in the end they spread themselves out to the original limit of his leave.

"At least we have not been cheated," said Isobel when at last they stood together on the deck of the ship, waiting for the second bell to ring, "and others are worse off. I believe those two poor people," and she pointed to a young officer and his child-like bride, "were only married yesterday."

The scene on the ship was dreary, for many were going in her to the various theatres of war, Egypt, Africa, and other places, and sad, oh! sad were the good-byes upon that bitter winter afternoon. Some of the women cried, especially those of the humbler class. But Isobel would not cry. She remained quite calm to the last, arranging a few flowers and unpacking a travelling bag in Godfrey's cabin, for as a colonel he had one to himself.

Then the second bell rang, and to the ears upon which its strident clamour fell the trump of doom could not have been more awful.

"Good-bye, my darling," she said, "good-bye, and remember what I have told you, that near or far, living or dead, we can never really be apart again, for ours is the Love Eternal given to us in the Beginning."

"Yes," he answered briefly, "I know that it is so and—enduring for ever! God bless us both as He sees best."

The ship cast off, and Isobel stood in the evening light watching from the quay till Godfrey vanished and the vessel which bore him was swallowed up in the shadows. Then she went back to the hotel and, throwing herself upon that widowed bed, kissed the place where his head had lain, and wept, ah! how she wept, for her joy-days were done and her heart was breaking in her.

After this Isobel took a night train back to town and, returning to Hawk's Hall, threw herself with the energy that was remarkable in her, into the management of her hospital and many another work and charity connected with the war. For it was only in work that she could forget herself and her aching loneliness.



Godfrey had a comfortable and a prosperous voyage, since it was almost before the days of submarines, at any rate so far as passenger steamers were concerned, and they saw no enemy ships. Therefore, within little more than a month he landed on the hot shores of Mombasa, and could cable to Isobel that he was safe and well and receive her loving answer.

His next business was to report himself in the proper quarter, which he did. Those over him seemed quite bewildered as to what he had come for or what he was to do, and could only suggest that he should travel to Nairobi and Uganda and put himself in touch with the civil authorities. This he did also and, as a result, formulated a certain scheme of action, to which his military superiors assented, intimating that he might do as he liked, so long as he did not interfere with them.

What happened to him may be very briefly described. In the end he started to visit a great chief on the borders of German East Africa, but in British territory, a man whose loyalty was rumoured to be doubtful. This chief, Jaga by name, was a professed Christian, and at his town there lived a missionary of the name of Tafelett, who had built a church there and was said to have much influence over him. So with the Reverend Mr. Tafelett Godfrey communicated by runners, saying that he was coming to visit him. Accordingly he started with a guard of native troops, a coloured interpreter and some servants, but without any white companion, since the attack on German territory was beginning and no one could be spared to go with him upon a diplomatic mission.

The journey was long and arduous, involving many days of marching across the East African veld and through its forests, where game of all sorts was extraordinarily plentiful, and at night they were surrounded by lions. At length, however, with the exception of one man who remained with the lions, they arrived safely at the town of Jaga and were met by Mr. Tafelett, who took Godfrey into his house, a neat thatched building with a wide verandah that stood by the church, which was a kind of whitewashed shed, also thatched.

Mr. Tafelett proved to be a clergyman of good birth and standing, one of those earnest, saint-like souls who follow literally the scriptural injunction and abandon all to advance the cause of their Master in the dark places of the earth. A tall, thin, nervous-looking man of not much over thirty years of age; one, too, possessed of considerable private means, he had some five years before given up a good living in England in order to obey what he considered to be his "call." Being sent to this outlying post, he found it in a condition of the most complete savagery, and worked as few have done. He built the church with native labour, furnishing it beautifully inside, mostly at his own expense. He learned the local languages, he started a school, he combated the witch-doctors and medicine-men.

Finally he met with his reward in the conversion of the young chief Jaga, which was followed by that of a considerable portion of his people.

But here came the trouble. The bulk of the tribe, which was large and powerful, did not share their chief's views. For instance, his uncle, Alulu, the head rain-maker and witch-doctor, differed from them very emphatically. He was shrewd enough to see that the triumph of Christianity meant his destruction, also the abandonment of all their ancient customs. He harangued the tribe in secret, asking them if they wished to bring upon themselves the vengeance of their ancestral and other spirits and to go through their days as the possessors of only one miserable wife, questions to which they answered that emphatically they did not. So the tribe was rent in two, and by far the smaller half clung to Jaga, to whom the dim, turbulent heathen thousands beneath his rule rendered but a lip service.

Then came the war, and Alulu and his great following saw their opportunity. Why should they not be rid of Jaga and the Christian teacher with his new-fangled notions? If it could be done in no other way, why should they not move across the border which was close by, into German territory? The Germans, at any rate, would not bother them about such matters; under their rule they might live as their forefathers had done from the beginning, and have as many wives as they chose without being called all sorts of ugly names.

This was the position when Godfrey arrived. His coming made a great sensation. He was reported to be a very big lord indeed, as big, or bigger than the King's governor himself. Alulu put it about that he had come to make a soldier of every fit man and to enslave the women and the elders to work on the roads or in dragging guns. The place seethed with secret ferment.

Mr. Tafelett knew something of all this through Jaga, who was genuinely frightened, and communicated it to Godfrey. In the result a meeting of all the headmen was held, which was attended by thousands of the people. Godfrey spoke through his interpreter, saying that in this great war the King of England required their help, and generally set out the objects of his mission, remarks that were received in respectful silence. Then Alulu spoke, devoting himself chiefly to an attack upon the Christian faith and on the interference of the white teacher with their customs, that, he observed, had resulted in their ancestral spirits cursing them with the worst drought they had experienced for years, which in the circumstances he, Alulu, could and would do nothing to alleviate. How could they fight and work for the Great King when their stomachs were pinched with hunger owing to the witchcraft and magical rites which the white teacher celebrated in the church?

"How, indeed?" shouted the heathen section, although in fact their season had been very good; while the Christians, feeling themselves in a minority, were silent.

Then the Chief, Jaga, spoke. He traversed all the arguments of Alulu, whom he denounced in no measured terms, saying that he was plotting against him. Finally he came down heavily on the side of the British, remarking that he knew who were the would-be traitors and that they should suffer in due course.

"It has been whispered in my ears," he concluded, "that there is a plot afoot against my friend, the white Teacher, who has done us all so much good. It has even been whispered that there are those," here he looked hard at Alulu, "who have declared that it would be well to kill this great white Lord who is our guest," and he pointed to Godfrey with his little chief's staff, "so that he may not return to tell who are the true traitors among the people of Jaga. I say to you who have thought such things, that this Lord is the greatest of all lords, and as well might you lay hands on our father, the mighty King of England himself, as upon this his friend and counsellor. If a drop of his blood is shed, then surely the King's armies will come, and we shall die, every one of us, the innocent and the guilty together. For terrible will be the vengeance of the King."

This outburst made a great impression, for all the multitude cried:

"It is so! We know that it is so," and Alulu interposed that he would as soon think of murdering his own mother (who, Mr. Tafelett whispered to Godfrey, had been dead these many years) as of touching a hair of the great white chief's head. On the contrary, it was their desire to do everything that he ordered them. But concerning the matter of the new custom of having one wife only, etc.

This brought Mr. Tafelett to his feet, for on monogamy he was especially strong, and the meeting ended on a theological discussion which nearly resulted in blows between the factions. Finally it was adjourned for a week, when it was arranged that an answer should be given to Godfrey's demands.

Three nights later an answer was given and one of a terrible sort.

Shortly after sundown Godfrey was sitting in the missionary's house writing a report. Mr. Tafelett, it being Sunday, was holding an evening service in the church, at which Jaga and most of the Christians were present. Suddenly a tumult arose, and the air was rent with savage shouts and shrieks. Godfrey sprang up and snatched his revolver just as some of his servants arrived and announced that the people in the church were being killed. Acting on his first impulse, he ran to the place, calling to his guard to follow him, which they did so tardily that he entered it alone. Here a sight of horror met his eyes.

The building was full of dead and dying people. By the altar, dressed in his savage witch-doctor's gear, stood Alulu, a lamp in his hand, with which evidently he had been firing the church, for tongues of flame ran up the walls. On the altar itself was something that had a white cloth thrown over it, as do the sacred vessels. Catching sight of Godfrey, with a yell the brute tore away the napkin, revealing the severed head of Mr. Tafelett, whose surplice-draped body Godfrey now distinguished lying in the shadows on one side of the altar!

"Here is the white medicine-man's magic wine," he screamed, pointing to the blood that ran down the broidered frontal. "Come, drink! come, drink!"

Godfrey ran forward up the church, his pistol in his hand. When he reached the chancel he stopped and fired at the mouthing, bedizened devil who was dancing hideously in front of the altar. The heavy service-revolver bullet struck him in some mortal place, for he leapt into the air, grabbed at the altar cloth and fell to the ground. There he lay still, covered by the cloth, with the massive brass crucifix resting face downwards on his breast and the murdered man's head lying at his side—as though it were looking at him.

This was the last sight that Godfrey saw for many a day, for just then a spear pierced his breast, also something struck him on the temple. A curious recollection rose in his mind of the head of a mummy after the Pasteur had broken it off, rolling along the floor in the flat at Lucerne. Then he thought he heard Madame Riennes laughing, after which he remembered no more; it might have been a thousand years, or it might have been a minute, for he had passed into a state that takes no reck of time.



Godfrey began to dream. He dreamed that he was travelling; that he was in a house, and then, a long while afterwards, that he was making a journey by sea.

Another vacuum of nothingness and he dreamed again, this time very vividly. Now his dream was that he had come to Egypt and was stretched on a bed in a room, through the windows of which he could see the Pyramids quite close at hand. More, he seemed to become acquainted with all their history. He saw them in the building; multitudes of brown men dragging huge blocks of stone up a slope of sand. He saw them finished one by one, and all the ceremonies of the worship with which they were connected. Dead Pharaohs were laid to rest there beneath his eyes, living Pharaohs prayed within their chapels and made oblation to the spirits of those who had gone before them, while ever the white-robed, shaven priests chanted in his ears.

Then all passed, and he saw them mighty as ever, but deserted, standing there in the desert, the monuments of a forgotten greatness, till at length a new people came and stripped off their marble coverings.

These things he remembered afterwards, but there were many more that he forgot.

Again Godfrey dreamed, a strange and beautiful dream which went on from day to day. It was that he was very ill and that Isobel had come to nurse him. She came quite suddenly and at first seemed a little frightened and disturbed, but afterwards very happy indeed. This went on for a while, till suddenly there struck him a sense of something terrible that had happened, of an upheaval of conditions, of a wrenching asunder of ties, of change utter and profound.

Then while he mourned because she was not there, Isobel came again, but different. The difference was indefinable, but it was undoubted. Her appearance seemed to have changed somewhat, and in the intervals between her comings he could never remember how she had been clothed, except for two things which she always seemed to wear, the little ring with the turquoise hearts, though oddly enough, not her wedding ring, and the string of small pearls which he had given her when they were married, and knew again by the clasp, that was fashioned in a lover's knot of gold. Her voice, too, seemed changed, or rather he did not hear her voice, since it appeared to speak within him, in his consciousness, not without to his ears. She told him all sorts of strange things, about a wonderful land in which they would live together, and the home that she was making ready for him, and the trees and flowers growing around it, that were unlike any of which Godfrey had ever heard. Also she said that there were many other matters whereof she would wish to speak to him, only she might not.

Finally there came a vivid dream in which she told him that soon he would wake up to the world again for a little while (she seemed to lay emphasis on this "little while") and, if he could not find her in it, that he must not grieve at all, since although their case seemed sad, it was much better than he could conceive. In his dream she made him promise that he would not grieve, and he did so, wondering. At this she smiled, looking more beautiful than ever he could have conceived her to be. Then she spoke these words, always, as it appeared, within him, printing them, as it were, upon his mind:

"Now you are about to wake up and I must leave you for a while. But this I promise you, my most dear, my beloved, my own, that before you fall asleep again for the last time, you shall see me once more, for that is allowed to me. Indeed it shall be I who will soothe you to sleep and I who will receive you when you awake again. Also in the space between, although you do not see me, you will always feel me near, and I shall be with you. So swear to me once more that you will not grieve."

Then in his vision Godfrey swore, and she appeared to lean over him and whisper words into his ear that, although they impressed themselves upon his brain as the others had done, had no meaning for him, since they were in some language which he did not understand.

Only he knew that they conveyed a blessing to him, and not that of Isobel alone!



CHAPTER XXI

LOVE ETERNAL

Godfrey awoke and looked about him. He was lying in a small room opposite to an open window that had thin gauze shutters which, as an old Indian, he knew at once were to keep out mosquitoes. Through this window he could see the mighty, towering shapes of the Pyramids, and reflected that after all there must have been some truth in those wonderful dreams. He lifted his hand; it was so thin that the strong sunlight shone through it. He touched his head and felt that it was wrapped in bandages, also that it seemed benumbed upon one side.

A little dark woman wearing a nurse's uniform, entered the room and he asked her where he was, as once before he had done in France and under very similar conditions. She stared and answered with an Irish accent:

"Where else but at Mena House Hospital. Don't the Pyramids tell you that?"

"I thought so," he replied. "How long have I been here?"

"Oh! two months, or more. I can't tell you, Colonel, unless I look at the books, with so many sick men coming and going. Shure! it's a pleasure to see you yourself again. We thought that perhaps you'd never wake up reasonably."

"Did you? I always knew that I should."

"And how did you know that?"

"Because someone whom I am very fond of, came and told me so."

She glanced at him sharply.

"Then it's myself that should be flattered," she answered, "or the night nurse, seeing that it is we who have cared for you with no visitors admitted except the doctors, and they didn't talk that way. Now, Colonel, just you drink this and have a nap, for you mustn't speak too much all at once. If you keep wagging your jaw you'll upset the bandages."

When he woke again it was night and now the full moon, such a moon as one sees in Egypt, shone upon the side of the Great Pyramid and made it silver. He could hear voices talking outside his door, one that of the Irish nurse which he recognised, and the other of a man, for although they spoke low, this sense of hearing seemed to be peculiarly acute to him.

"It is so, Major," said the nurse. "I tell you that except for a little matter about someone whom he thought had been visiting him, he is as reasonable as I am, and much more than you are, saving your presence."

"Well," answered the doctor, "as you speak the truth sometimes, Sister, I'm inclined to believe you, but all I have to say is that I could have staked my professional reputation that the poor chap would never get his wits again. He has had an awful blow and on the top of an old wound, too. After all these months, it's strange, very strange, and I hope it will continue."

"Well, of course, Major, there is the delusion about the lady."

"Lady! How do you know it was a lady? Just like a woman making up a romance out of nothing. Yes, there's the delusion, which is bad. Keep his mind off it as much as possible, and tell him some of your own in your best brogue. I'll come and examine him to-morrow morning."

Then the voices died away and Godfrey almost laughed because they had talked of his "delusion," when he knew so well that it was none. Isobel had been with him. Yes, although he could neither hear nor see her, Isobel was with him now for he felt her presence. And yet how could this be if he was in Egypt and she was in England? So wondering, he fell asleep again.

By degrees as he gathered strength, Godfrey learned all the story of what had happened to him, or rather so much of it as those in charge of the hospital knew. It appeared, according to Sister Elizabeth, as his nurse was named, that when he was struck down in the church, "somewhere in Africa" as she said vaguely, the guards whom he had with him, rushed in, firing on the native murderers who fled away except those who were killed.

Believing that, with the missionary, they had murdered the King's Officer, a great man, they fled fast and far into German East Africa and were no more seen. The Chief, Jaga, who had escaped, caused him to be carried out of the burning church to the missionary's house, and sent runners to the nearest magistracy many miles away, where there was a doctor. So there he lay in the house. A native servant who once acted as a hospital orderly, had washed his wounds and bound them up. One of these, that on the head, was caused by a kerry or some blunt instrument, and the other was a spear-stab in the lung. Also from time to time this servant poured milk down his throat.

At length the doctor came with an armed escort and, greatly daring, performed some operation which relieved the pressure on the brain and saved his life. In that house he lay for a month or more and then, in a semi-comatose condition, was carried by slow stages in a litter back to Mombasa. Here he lay another month or so and as his mind showed no signs of returning, was at length put on board a ship and brought to Egypt.

Meanwhile, as Godfrey learned afterwards, he was believed to have been murdered with the missionary, and a report to that effect was sent to England, which, in the general muddle that prevailed at the beginning of the war, had never been corrected. For be it remembered it was not until he was carried to Mombasa, nearly two months after he was hurt, that he reached any place where there was a telegraph. By this time also, those at Mombasa had plenty of fresh casualties to report, and indeed were not aware, or had forgotten what exact story had been sent home concerning Godfrey who could not speak for himself. So it came about through a series of mischances, that at home he was believed to be dead as happened to many other men in the course of the great war.



After he came to himself at the Mena House Hospital, Godfrey inquired whether there were not some letters for him, but none could be found. He had arranged with the only person likely to write to him, namely Isobel, to do so through the War Office, and evidently that plan had not succeeded, for her letters had gone astray. The truth was, of course, that some had been lost and after definite news of his death was received, the rest had not been forwarded. Now he bethought him that he would cable home to Isobel to tell her that he was recovering, though somehow he imagined that she would know this already through the authorities. With great difficulty, for the hurt to his side made it hard for him to use his arm, he wrote the telegram and gave it to Sister Elizabeth to send, remarking that he would pay the cost as soon as he could draw some money.

"That won't matter," she replied as she took the cable. Then with an odd look at him she went away as though to arrange for its despatch.

After she had gone, two orderlies helped Godfrey downstairs to sit on the broad verandah of the hospital. Here still stood many of the little tables which used to serve for pleasant tea-parties when the building was an hotel in the days before the war. On these lay some old English newspapers. Godfrey picked up one of them with his left hand, and began to read idly enough. Almost the first paragraph that his eye fell on was headed:

"Heroic Death of a V.A.D. Commandant."

Something made him read on quickly, and this was what he saw:

"At the inquest on the late Mrs. Knight, the wife of Colonel Knight who was reported murdered by natives in East Africa some little time ago, some interesting evidence was given. It appeared from the testimony of Mrs. Parsons, a nurse in the Hawk's Hall Hospital, that when warning was given of the approach of Zeppelins during last week's raid on the Eastern Counties and London, the patients in the upper rooms of the hospital were removed to its lower floors. Finding that one young man, a private in the Suffolk Regiment who has lost both his feet, had been overlooked, Mrs. Knight, followed by Mrs. Parsons, went upstairs to help him down. When Mrs. Parsons, whom she outran, reached the door of the ward there was a great explosion, apparently on the roof. She waited till the dust had cleared off and groped her way down the ward with the help of an electric torch. Reaching Private Thompson's bed, she saw lying on it Mrs. Knight who had been killed by the fallen masonry. Private Thompson, who was unhurt beneath the body, said that when the bricks began to come down Mrs. Knight called to him to lie still and threw herself on him to protect him. Then something heavy, he believed the stone coping of a chimney, fell on her back and she uttered one word, he thought it was a name, and was silent. Mrs. Knight, who was the only child of the late Sir John Blake, Bart., the well-known shipowner, is said to have been one of the richest women in England. She married the late Colonel Knight some months ago, immediately before he was sent to East Africa. Under the provisions of her will the cremated remains of Mrs. Knight will be interred in the chancel of the Abbey Church at Monk's Acre."

Godfrey read this awful paragraph twice and looked at the date of the paper. It was nearly two months old.

"So she was dead when she came to me. Oh! now I understand," he muttered to himself, and then, had not a passing native servant caught him, he would have fallen to the ground. It was one of the ten thousand minor tragedies of the world war, that is all.

Three months later, still very crippled and coughing badly, because of the injury to his lung, he reported himself in London, and once more saw the Under-Secretary who had sent him out to East Africa. There he sat in the same room, at the same desk, looking precisely the same.

"I am sorry, Sir, that my mission has failed through circumstances beyond my control. I can only add that I did my best," he said briefly.

"I know," answered the official; "it was no fault of yours if those black brutes tried to murder you. Everything goes wrong in that cursed East Africa. Now go home and get yourself fit again, my dear fellow," he went on very kindly, adding, "Your services will not be overlooked."

"I have no home, and I shall never be fit again," replied Godfrey, and left the room.

"I forgot," thought the Under-Secretary. "His wife was killed in a Zeppelin raid. Odd that she should have been taken and he left."

Then, with a sigh and a shrug of the shoulders he turned to his business.



Godfrey went to the little house at Hampstead where he used to live while he was studying as a lad, for here Mrs. Parsons was waiting for him. Then for the first time he gave way and they wept in each other's arms.

"We were too happy, Nurse," he said.

"Yes," she answered, "love like hers wasn't for this world, and more than once she said to me that she never expected to see you again in the flesh, though I thought she meant it was you who would go, as might have been expected. Stop, I have something for you."

Going to a desk she produced from it a ring, that with the turquoise hearts; also a canvas-covered book.

"That's her diary," she said, "she used to write in it every day."

That night Godfrey read many beautiful and sacred things in this diary. From it he learned that the shock of his supposed death had caused Isobel to miscarry and made her ill for some time, though underneath the entries about her illness and the false news of his death she had written:

"He is not dead. I know that he is not dead."

Afterwards there were some curious sentences in which she spoke joyfully of having seen him in her sleep, ill, but living and going to recover, "at any rate for a while," she had added.

THE END