I should like to say good-bye to her. Is she at home?"

"No, she's out in the town, doing some business for me--or rather trying
to do it! Have _you_ found any difficulty in getting cheques changed the
last few days, Major Guthrie?"

"No; for I've always kept money in the house," he said quickly. "And
glad I am now that I did. It used to annoy my mother--it used to make
her afraid that we should be burgled. But of course I never told any one
else." He looked at her rather oddly. "I've quite a lot of money here,
with me now."

"I wonder if you would be so kind as to cash me a cheque?" She grew a
little pink. She was not used to asking even small favours from her
friends. Impulsive, easy-going as she seemed, there was yet a very proud
and reticent streak in Mary Otway's nature.

"Of course I will. In fact----" and then he stopped abruptly, for she
had gone up to her table, and was opening the letter she had just
written to James Hayley.

"Could you really conveniently let me have as much as twenty pounds?"
and she held him out the cheque.

"Certainly. Then you're not expecting Miss Rose back for a minute or
two?"

"Oh, no! She only went out twenty minutes ago."

He was still standing, and Mrs. Otway suddenly felt herself to be
inhospitable.

"Do sit down," she said hurriedly. Somehow in the last few minutes her
point of view, her attitude to her friend, her kind, considerate,
courteous friend, had altered. She no longer looked at him with
indulgent half-contempt as an idle man, a man who, though he was very
good to his mother, and sometimes very useful to herself, had always
led, excepting during the South African War (and that was a long time
ago), an idle, useless kind of life. He was going now to face real
danger, perchance--but her mind shrank from _that_ thought, from that
dread possibility--death itself. Somehow the fact that Major Guthrie was
going with his regiment to France brought the War perceptibly nearer to
Mrs. Otway, and made it for the first time real.

He quietly took the easy chair she had motioned him to take, and she sat
down too.

"Well, I have to confess that you were right and I wrong! You always
thought we should fight the Germans." She tried to speak playfully, but
there was a certain pain in the admission, for she had always scorned
his quiet prophecies and declared him to be, in this one matter,
prejudiced and unfair.

"Yes," he said, "that's quite true! But, Mrs. Otway? I'm very