ked out?' said Selwyn, stopping in his walk.

'Didn't you hear? Durwent was shot by court-martial--drunk, they say,
in the line.'

Selwyn's hand gripped his arm. 'Where is Lord Durwent now?' he said
breathlessly.

'In the country, I believe. But why so agitated, my Americano?'

There was no answer. As fast as his weary limbs could take him, Selwyn
was making for the door.

II.

It was nearly eight o'clock that night when Selwyn alighted from a
train at the village where he and Elise had heard the fateful
announcement of war. He walked through the quaint street, silent and
deserted in the November night. Except for two or three people at the
station, there was no one to be seen as his footsteps on the cobbled
road knocked with their echo against the casement windows of the
slumbering dwellings. Reaching the inn, he bargained for a conveyance,
and after taking a little food, and arranging for a room, he went
outside again, and climbed into a dogcart which had been made ready.

After three or four futile attempts at conversation, the driver retired
behind his own thoughts, and left the American to the reverie forced on
him by every familiar thing looming out of the shadows. There was not
a turn of the road, not one rising slope, that did not mean some memory
of Elise. The very night itself, drowsy with the music of the breeze
and the heavy perfume of late autumn, was nature's frame encircling her
personality. He had dreaded going because of the longings which were
certain to be reawakened, but he had not known that in the secret
crevices of his soul there had been left such sleeping memories that
rustling bushes and silent meadows would make him want to cry aloud her
name.

He told himself that she must be in London, and had forgotten him--and
that it was better so. But the night and the darkened road would not
be denied. They held the very essence of her being, and left him weak
with the ecstasy of his emotion.

At the lodge gate they found a soldier, who allowed them to pass, and
they drove on towards the house. So vivid was the sense of her
presence that he almost thought he saw her and himself running
hand-in-hand together again down the road. By that oak he had picked
her up in his arms--and he wondered at the human mind which can find
torture and joy in the one recollection.

Driving into the courtyard, he told the man to wait, and knocked at the
great central door. An orderly admitted h