le who were sure of speedy victory and
talked of 'knock-out' blows.

Then six months later, after the capture of the Messines Ridge, in
which he took part, he reappeared, and finding his father,
apparently, almost intolerable, and Pamela and Desmond away, he
migrated to Chetworth. And there he and Beryl were constantly
thrown together. He never talked to her with much intimacy; he
certainly never made love to her. But suddenly she became aware that
she had grown very necessary to him, that he missed her when she was
away, that his eyes lit up when she came back. A special relation
was growing up between them. Her father perceived it; so did her
brother Arthur; and they had both done their best to help it on.
They were both very fond of Aubrey; and nothing could be more
natural than that she should marry one who had been her neighbour
and playmate from childhood.

The thing drifted on, and one day, in the depths of a summer
beechwood, some look in the girl's eyes, some note of tremulous and
passionate sweetness, beyond her control, in her deep quiet voice,
touched something irrepressible in him, and he turned to her with a
face of intense, almost hungry yearning, and caught her
hands--'Dear--dearest Beryl, could you--?'

The words broke off, but her eyes spoke in reply to his, and her
sudden whiteness. He drew her to him, and folded her close.

'I don't think I ought'--the faltering, broken voice startled
her--'I don't know whether I can make you happy. Dear, dear little
Beryl!'

At that she put up her mouth instinctively, only to shrink back
under the energy of his kiss. Then they had walked on together, hand
in hand; but she remembered that, even before they left the wood,
something seemed to have dimmed the extraordinary bliss of the first
moment--some restlessness in him--some touch of absent-mindedness,
as though he grudged himself his own happiness.

And so it had been ever since. He had resumed his work at
Aldershot, and owing to certain consequences of the wound in 1915
was not likely, in spite of desperate efforts on his own part, to be
sent back to the front. His letters varied just as his presence did.
Something always seemed to be kept back from her--was always beyond
her reach. Sometimes she supposed she was not clever enough, that he
found her inadequate and irresponsive. Sometimes, with a sudden,
half-guilty sense of disloyalty to him, she vaguely wondered whether
there was some secret in his life