followed by the surgeon and
nurses who had come from France. Elizabeth caught a glimpse of a
white face and closed eyes. It was as though something royal and
sacred entered the hushed room. She could have fallen on her knees,
as in a Breton 'pardon' when the Host goes by.

CHAPTER XVI

The bustle of the arrival was over. The doctors had given their
orders, the nurses were at their posts for the night, and, under
morphia, Desmond was sleeping. In the shaded library there were only
hushed voices and movements. By the light of the one lamp, which was
screened from the bed, one saw dimly the fantastic shapes in the
glass cases which lined the walls--the little Tanagra figures with
their sun-hats and flowing dress--bronzes of Apollo or Hermes--a
bronze bull--an ibex--a cup wreathed with acanthus. And in the
shadow at the far end rose the great Nike. She seemed to be asking
what the white bed and the shrouded figure upon it might
mean--protesting that these were not her symbols, or a language that
she knew.

Yet at times, as the light varied, she seemed to take another
aspect. To Aubrey, sitting beside his brother, the Nike more than
once suggested the recollection of a broken Virgin hanging from a
fragment of a ruined church which he remembered on a bit of road
near Mametz, at which he had seen passing soldiers look stealthily
and long. Her piteous arms, empty of the babe, suggested motherhood
to boys fresh from home; and there were moments when this hovering
Nike seemed to breathe a mysterious tenderness like hers--became a
proud and splendid angel of consolation--only, indeed, to resume,
with some fresh change in the shadows, its pagan indifference, its
exultant loneliness.

The Squire sat by the fire, staring into the redness of the logs.
Occasionally nurse or doctor would come and whisper to him. He
scarcely seemed to hear them. What was the good of talking? He
knew that Desmond was doomed--that his boy's noble body was
shattered--and the end could only be a question of days--possibly
a week. During the first nights of Desmond's sufferings, the
Squire had lived through what had seemed an eternity of torment.
Now there was no more agony. Morphia could be freely given--and
would be given till all was over. The boy's young strength was
resisting splendidly, a vitality so superb was hard to beat; but
beaten it would be, by the brutality of the bullet which had
inflicted an internal injury past repair, against