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Half an hour before Mrs Sarah’s closing of that door Kitty had been sitting on the seat in Queen’s Walk where she and Alex had sat on the morning of their entering into each other’s lives. She had had a letter from him, and she had taken it out with her into the open air, away from all stuffinesses, for it was a letter through which reality blew.

“Kitty,—I’m afraid—.”

Her heart answered that cry. He had poured out the truth to her in that letter, and yet it was by no means a contemptible letter, but in its way very touching and rather fine. He was afraid,—most damnably afraid, and yet he was able to love and to laugh. She fastened upon that note of humour, and pondered it. “If you had seen me do a dive into a shell-hole right on top of a few poor beggars who had managed to get hold of a ‘dixie’ of tea. I upset the dixie and the precious tea. They were awfully decent about it. I had a packet of cigarettes, and I passed them out.” He said that the men were awfully decent. There was fear—of course—underneath, but not the sort of fear he had expected. Faces were stiff. “And the chaps—my fellow-officers—do their jobs. That is what gets me, Kitty. It’s humiliating and it’s splendid. I may be in a devil of a funk, but I am managing to carry on. I think my chief terror is—the fear of letting myself and other people down.” She nodded her head over this. If he were feeling like that he would go on feeling in the right way. She did not want him to write like a humbug. Wives should know, and be able to help. And she was helping—“You are here—always, most vividly so. Do you remember your putting your arms round my head? Well,—when the shelling is rather bad I have a feeling that your arms are over my head.” That made her eyes deepen, and her fists clench themselves firmly. She was protecting him, yes, the sensitive, lovable, frightened, striving boy in him. Nor was he wholly and selfishly introspective. “I suppose one ought not to tell you a lot of this. I ought to pretend—. But it does help me so, Kitty. Don’t think me a craven little beast. You have been so good to me. It helps. I can shove my head against a sandbag, and feel—. It helps to be believed in. I suppose it’s because I believe in you—so utterly. One must—you know. It’s splendid when you can—.”

No, she had no fault to find with that letter. It went right to her heart and to her head. It made her feel deep and good and sad and yet strangely happy. It made her feel that she wanted to fling herself to him out yonder in brave and burning words. Upsetting that tea, and handing out his cigarettes, and seeing the pathos and the humour of it! O, he was all right; he was made of human stuff, and she loved him. Heavens, how she loved him! with her square head and her stout heart.