n. For every lying oath he has sworn to her, for every false
promise made to the wrecking of her maiden peace, for every kiss those
innocent lips have been despoiled of, for every touch of his that has
soiled her, for every breath of his that has scorched the white petals of
the Convent-reared lily, he shall pay the price.

Silently Saxham registers this oath upon that beloved red-brown head,
since he denies its Maker His honour, and the whirling blackness that is
within him is rent and cloven, for one blinding instant, by the
levin-fires of Hell. He knows thenceforward what he will do, as he walks
with the pale Chaplain between the shell-torn houses, and along the
littered streets, where men and women and children, thin and haggard and
listless with hunger, and the deadly inertia of long confinement, pass and
repass as indifferently as though no guns were battering and growling from
the low grey hills south and east, and the incessant rattle of rifle-fire
were the innocent expenditure of blank cartridge incidental to a sham
fight.

They reach the Chaplain's hotel, and go to his room. Saxham waits silently
while Julius searches for and finds Father Tatham's letter, takes it and
reads it attentively, puts it carefully away in a worn notecase, restores
the notecase to the inner pocket of his jacket, and, without a nod or word
of farewell, is gone.

XLVII

To the remarkably complete system of underground wires installed by the
Garrison Telephone Corps, Lady Hannah Wrynche, on duty at the Convalescent
Hospital that was once the Officers' Club, was, upon the Thursday that
saw the publication of the string of paragraphs previously quoted from the
_Siege Gazette_, indebted for what she afterwards described with
ruefulness as a "heckled morning."

Once a week the "Social Jottings," bubbling from the effervescent Gold
Pen, descended like rain upon the parched soil of drouthy Gueldersdorp. To
make gossip where there is none is as difficult as making bricks without
clay, or trimming a hat when you are a member of the Wild Birds'
Protection Society, and plumage is Fashion's latest cry. Under the
circumstances a genuine item of general and public interest was a pearl of
price. And yet something had told the little lady that the ruthless Blue
Pencil of Supreme Authority would deprive her of the supreme joy of
casting it before the readers of the _Siege Gazette_. She seemed to hear
him saying, in the pleasant voice she kn