us. He stood between us always. He stands
between us now." It was an awful thought. It was like a great blasphemy.
He was afraid of it. And yet he now felt that it was an old, old thought
in his mind which only now had he been able to formulate. He had known
without knowing consciously, but now he consciously knew.

He took care at this moment not to look at Rosamund. If he looked,
surely she would see in his eyes his terrible thought, the thought he
was going to carry with him to South Africa. Making a great effort
he began to tell her all that he knew about the C.I.V. They discussed
matters in a comradely spirit. Rosamund said many warm-hearted things,
showed herself almost eagerly solicitous. They went up to sit by the
fire in her little room. Dion smoked. They talked for a long time. Had
any one been there to listen he would probably have thought, "This man
has got the ideal wife. She's a true comrade as well as a wife." But
all the time Dion kept on saying to himself, "This is the result of her
prayers before dinner. She is being good." Only when it was late, past
their usual hour for going to bed, did he feel that the strong humanity
in Rosamund had definitely gained ground, that she was being genuinely
carried away by warm impulses connected with dear England, our men, and
with him.

When they got up at last to go to bed she exclaimed:

"I shall always love what you have done, Dion. You know that."

"But not the way of my doing it!" trembled on his lips.

He did not say it, however. Why lead her back even for a moment to
bitterness?

That night he lay with his thoughts, and in the darkness the ray was
piercing bright and looked keen like a sharpened sword.

CHAPTER II

On the fourth of January Dion and about nine hundred other men were
sworn in at the Guildhall; on January the seventeenth, eight hundred
of them, including Dion, were presented with the Freedom of the City
of London; on the nineteenth they were equipped and attended a farewell
service at St. Paul's Cathedral, after which they were entertained at
supper, some at Gray's Inn and some at Lincoln's Inn; on the twentieth
they entrained for Southampton, from which port they sailed in the
afternoon for South Africa. Dion was on board of the "Ariosto."

Strangely, perhaps, he was almost glad when the ship cast off and the
shores of England faded and presently were lost beyond the horizon line.
He was alone now with his duty. Life was suddenly