te being--physical and
spiritual--would be racked by the sight of Sarratt's suffering and
death. And no doubt--pure, scrupulous little soul!--she would be
tormented by the thought of what had just passed between herself and
him, before the news from France arrived. He might as well look that in
the face.

Well!--patience and time--there was nothing else to look to. He braced
himself to both, as he sped homeward through the high snowy roads, and
dropped through sleeping Keswick to Bassenthwaite and Carton. Then with
the sight of the hospital, the Red Cross flag drooping above its
doorway, as he drove up to it, the burden and interest of his great
responsibilities returned upon him. He jumped out to say a few cheery
words of thanks to his chauffeur, and went on with a rapid step to his
office on the ground floor, where he found important letters and
telegrams awaiting him. He dealt with them till far into the night. But
the thought of Nelly never really left him; nor that haunting physical
memory of her soft head upon his shoulder.

CHAPTER XVI

Of the weary hours which intervened between her meeting with Cicely and
Marsworth at Windermere station and her sight of Dr. Howson on the
rain-beaten quay at Bolougne, Nelly Sarratt could afterwards have given
no clear account. Of all the strings that were pulled, and the exalted
persons invoked, in order to place her as quickly as possible by the
side of her dying husband, she knew practically nothing. Cicely and
Marsworth, with Farrell to help them at the other end of a telegraph
wire, did everything. Passports and special permits were available in a
minimum of time. In the winter dawn at Euston Station, there was the
grey-headed Miss Eustace waiting; and two famous Army doctors journeyed
to Charing Cross a few hours later, on purpose to warn the wife of the
condition in which she was likely to find her husband, and to give her
kindly advice as to how she could help him most. The case had already
made a sensation at the Army Medical Headquarters; the reports on it
from France were being eagerly followed; and when the young wife
appeared from the north, her pathetic beauty quickened the general
sympathy. Nelly's path to France was smoothed in every possible way. No
Royalty could have been more anxiously thought for.

But she herself realised scarcely anything about it. It was her nature
to be grateful, sweet, responsive; but her gratitude and her sweetness
during th