rom him. I'd almost forgotten
all this until two months ago, when I recognized Sargent's painting of
you in your sister's house. Then for the first time I discovered your
name and who he was. Since then he's given me no rest."

She had been leaning forward, her arm supported on her knee, her chin
cushioned in her hand, the white light from the mist-covered meadows
falling softly on her through the tall window, revealing the pulse
beating in her throat and the trembling of her thin sweet mouth.

"What was it that he wanted you to do for me, Lord Taborley?"

He hesitated, clasping his forehead, like a man whose memory had
suddenly gone blank. "I'm not sure. And yet I was sure before I started
talking. Didn't you believe that he died hating you?"

She shook her head. "He left a child by me."

"Then, perhaps it wasn't that he hadn't hated you, but that he'd loved
you in his last moments. Was it that which he wanted me to tell you?"

Again, with a gesture, she negatived his suggestion. "He'd never have
doubted that I would know he had died loving me."

"Then why did he send me?"

Even while he asked it, he marveled at his certainty that she shared his
conviction that he had been sent.

She turned her eyes full on his face and let them dwell there
searchingly. As he returned her gaze, he noted that she was less young
than he had supposed. She was older than her portrait. Her hair, which
had looked night-black in the shadows, was prematurely frosted. The
moonlight, strengthening, picked out remorselessly each silver thread.
She was no longer capable of putting back the hands of time for any man.

She had read his thoughts. The pride went out of her voice. "Perhaps he
sent you," she faltered, "that he might give me back a little of what he
took."

"What did he take? Anything that I have----"

She leant back in her chair. Her face was again in shadow. "My youth. My
happiness."

In the silence which followed he was aware that the third presence had
departed.

IX

"Your youth! Your happiness!" He was astounded. "Strange that you should
say that! I thought that I alone was searching."

"Let me talk," she begged. "I want to speak about myself. Not for my own
sake, but for yours. To men like you who have lived at the Front, life
has become a terribly earnest affair. You're like impatient children;
what you want you want quickly. You seem to be afraid to postpone
anything lest death should carry you off before yo