dn't stay long.'

'Oh no, we needn't stay long.'

Bridget wrote the letter, and disappeared to post it. Nelly was left
alone in darkness. The air about her seemed to be ringing with the words
of her letter.

'MY OWN DARLING,--We are just going over. I have found a man going
back to D.H.Q. who will post this--and I just want you to know
that, whatever happens, you are my beloved, and our love can't die.
God bless you, my dear, dear wife.... We are all in good
spirits--everything ought to go well--and I will write the first
moment possible.

'GEORGE.'

She seemed to see him, tearing the leaf from the little block she had
given him, and standing in the trench, so slim and straight in his
khaki. And then, what happened after? when the rush came? Would she
never know? If he never came back to her, what was she going to do with
her life? Waves of lonely terror went through her--terror of the long
sorrow before her--terror of her own weakness.

And then again--reaction. She sat up in bed, angrily wrestling with her
own lapse from hope. Of course it was all coming right! She turned on
the light, with a small trembling hand, and tried to read a newspaper
Bridget had brought in. But the words swam before her; the paper dropped
from her grasp; and when Bridget came back, her face was hidden, she
seemed to be asleep.

* * * * *

'Is this it?' said Nelly, looking in alarm at the new and splendid house
before which the taxi had drawn up.

'Well, it's the right number!' And Bridget, rather flurried, looked at
the piece of paper on which Farrell had written the address for her, the
night before.

She jumped out of the taxi and ran up some marble steps towards a glass
door covered with a lattice metal-work, beyond which a hall, a marble
staircase and a lift shewed dimly. Inside, a porter in livery, at the
first sight of the taxi, put down the newspaper he was reading, and
hurried to the door.

'Is this Sir William Farrell's flat?' asked Bridget.

'It's all right, Miss. They're expecting you. Sir William went off this
morning. I was to tell you he had to go down to Aldershot to-day on
business, but he hoped to look in this evening, on his way to Euston, to
see that you had everything comfortable.'

Reluctantly, and with a feeble step, Nelly descended, helped by the
porter.

'Oh, Bridget, I wish we hadn't come!' She breathed it into her sister's
ear, as