I do not think we shall come
back.'

'O Judy,' I cried, catching at her sleeve, 'he is only a boy!'

'There were times when I thought that conclusive. Now the misery of it
has gone to sleep; don't waken it. It pleases me to believe that the
years are a convention. I never had any dignity, you know, and I seem
to have missed the moral deliverance. I only want--oh, you know what I
want. Why don't you open your telegram?'

I had been folding and fingering the brown envelope as if it had been a
scrap of waste paper.

'It is probably from Mrs. Watkins about the victoria,' I said,
feeling its profound irrelevance. 'I wired an offer to her in Bombay.
However'--and I read the telegram, the little solving telegram from
Army Headquarters. I turned my back on her to read it again, and then I
replaced it very carefully and put it in my pocket. It was a moment to
take hold of with both hands, crying on all one's gods for steadiness.

'How white you look!' said Mrs. Harbottle, with concern. 'Not bad news?'

'On the contrary, excellent news. Judy, will you stay to lunch?'

She looked at me, hesitating. 'Won't it seem rather a compromise on your
part? When you ought to be rousing the city--'

'I don't intend to rouse the city,' I said.

'I have given you the chance.'

'Thank you,' I said, grimly, 'but the only real favour you can do me is
to stay to lunch.' It was then just on one.

'I'll stay,' she said, 'if you will promise not to make any sort of
effort. I shouldn't mind, but it would distress you.'

'I promise absolutely,' I said, and ironical joy rose up in me, and the
telegram burned in my pocket.

She would talk of it, though I found it hard to let her go on, knowing
and knowing and knowing as I did that for that day at least it could not
be. There was very little about herself that she wanted to tell me; she
was there confessed a woman whom joy had overcome; it was understood
that we both accepted that situation. But in the details which she asked
me to take charge of it was plain that she also kept a watchful eye upon
fate--matters of business.

We were in the drawing-room. The little round clock in its Armritsar
case marked half-past three. Judy put down her coffee cup and rose to
go. As she glanced at the clock the light deepened in her eyes, and I,
with her hand in mine, felt like an agent of the Destroyer--for it was
half-past three--consumed myself with fear lest the blow had miscarried.
Then as we stood,