rave as others who had fallen that morning: his name
would be given out as missing from the Bavarian corps to which he
belonged, and in time, after the war was over, she would grow to believe
that she would never see him again.

But the sheer impossibility of letting this happen, though it entailed
nothing on him except the mere abstention from speech, took away the
slightest temptation that silence offered. He knew that again and again
Sylvia would refer to Hermann, wondering where he was, praying for his
safety, hoping perhaps even that, like Michael, he would be wounded and
thus escape from the inferno at the front, and it was so absolutely
out of the question that he should listen to this, try to offer little
encouragements, wonder with her whether he was not safe, that even
in his most depressed and shrinking hours he never for a moment
contemplated silence. Certainly he had to tell her that Hermann was
dead, and to account for the fact that he knew him to be dead. And
in the long watches of the wakeful night, when his mind moved in the
twilight of drowsiness and fever and pain, it was here that a certain
temptation entered. For it was easy to say (and no one could ever
contradict him) that some man near him, that one perhaps who had fallen
back with a grunt, had killed Hermann on the edge of the trench. Humanly
speaking, there was no chance at all of that innocent falsehood being
disproved. In the scurry and wild confusion of the attack none but he
would remember exactly what had happened, and as he thought of that
tossing and turning, it seemed to one part of his mind that the
innocence of that falsehood would even be laudable, be heroic. It would
save Sylvia the horrible shock of knowing that her lover had killed her
brother; it would save her all that piercing of the iron into her soul
that must inevitably be suffered by her if she knew the truth. And who
could tell what effect the knowledge of the truth would have on her?
Michael felt that it was at the least possible that she could never bear
to see him again, still less sleep in the arms of the one who had killed
her brother. That knowledge, even if she could put it out of mind in
pity and sorrow for Michael, would surely return and return again,
and tear her from him sobbing and trembling. There was all to risk
in telling her the truth; sorrow and bitterness for her and for him
separation and a lifelong regret were piled up in the balance against
the unknow