e
awful suspense that made his fingers cold as he opened the daily papers,
brought into it to her an echo of victorious music that beat to the
tramp of advancing feet that marched ever forward leaving the glittering
Rhine leagues upon leagues in their rear. The Bavarian corps in which
Hermann served was known to be somewhere on the Western front, for
the Emperor had addressed them ten days before on their departure from
Munich, and Sylvia and Michael were both aware of that. But they
who loved Hermann best could not speak of it to each other, and the
knowledge of it had to be hidden in silence, as if it had been some
guilty secret in which they were the terrified accomplices, instead of
its being a bond of love which bound them both to Hermann.

In addition to the national anxiety, there was the suspense of those
whose sons and husbands and fathers were in the fighting line. Columns
of casualty lists were published, and each name appearing there was a
sword that pierced a home. One such list, published early in September,
was seen by Michael as he drove down on Sunday morning to spend the rest
of the day with Sylvia, and the first name that he read there was that
of Francis. For a moment, as he remembered afterwards, the print had
danced before his eyes, as if seen through the quiver of hot air. Then
it settled down and he saw it clearly.

He turned and drove back to his rooms in Half Moon Street, feeling that
strange craving for loneliness that shuns any companionship. He must,
for a little, sit alone with the fact, face it, adjust himself to it.
Till that moment when the dancing print grew still again he had not, in
all the anxiety and suspense of those days, thought of Francis's death
as a possibility even. He had heard from him only two mornings before,
in a letter thoroughly characteristic that saw, as Francis always saw,
the pleasant and agreeable side of things. Washing, he had announced,
was a delusion; after a week without it you began to wonder why you had
ever made a habit of it. . . . They had had a lot of marching, always
in the wrong direction, but everyone knew that would soon be over. . . .
Wasn't London very beastly in August? . . . Would Michael see if he
could get some proper cigarettes out to him? Here there was nothing but
little black French affairs (and not many of them) which tied a knot in
the throat of the smoker. . . . And now Francis, with all his gaiety
and his affection, and his light plea