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Dusk was falling when Pierce Hammersly pushed open the gate of Heather Cottage. He had been running across the common, and he looked strung up and excited.

Janet, rising out of a deck-chair, a pale white figure in the dusk, held out her hands to him.

“I’m sorry I’m so late, dear; I have been talking things over with my father. Janet, you have got to marry me.”

“My dear——!”

“Before I go. It can be done—legally, I mean; there’s time. Dick Hansard’s death has made me see everything in a new light; supposing anything happened to me, your position would be so different if we were married.”

“You mean——?”

“I want to feel sure that you would not be left to the mercies of other people. I have talked to father about it. There would be the pension and a little money of my own, and I could will you a life interest in anything I was to inherit.”

She took his face between her hands and kissed him.

“You dear. This touches me very deeply. But I won’t marry you, Pierce.”

“But, Janet——”

“No, no——”

“But why not? It will make me mad to think——”

She looked into his eyes.

“I want to wait for you. I haven’t asked for anything else in the world but you. And there’s a pride in me that forbids me to marry you for anything I might get.”

“It’s just blank fanaticism!”

“No, no. It’s a good pride, a clean pride. No one will be able to say that I made things safe for myself. Besides, dearest, if I lost you, I should be no worse off than before. I mean, money could not make it up to me; I should want to work, work to help me to bear it.”

He held her in his arms and pleaded.

“I only want to feel that you won’t be worried by sordid cares. Don’t you understand? Why trouble about what gossiping fools might say?”

But she remained obdurate.

“I won’t do it, dearest. I understand how you feel, and I love you for it. But there is a pride in my love; I am going to wait for you, just as I was before you came to me.”

“Oh, my dear, won’t you let me leave you a little money?”

“No, not a penny. I shall feel so much happier, stronger. And somehow I think that your father would agree with me.”

“The pater was quite willing——”

“Of course. He is generous and good. But—but supposing you never came back to me”—her voice broke a little—“I couldn’t bear to feel that I was profiting. If we had been engaged for months I might have felt differently.”

He could not help but admire her delicate sense of self-respect.

“Well, I give way to you. I shall leave you in trust with the pater. He’ll look after you. Now, about to-morrow. If we catch the 8.50, we shall be in town by 10.30. I will send the car for you at a quarter-past eight.”

They wandered about the garden in the dusk, and a great sadness oppressed them both. The wrench was very near, and poor Dick Hansard’s death had brought the grim shadow of the reality very near to them. Pierce’s right arm held Janet with a new and desperate tenderness; her head rested upon his shoulder.

“I feel almost a coward to-night, dear.”

She sighed, and put her hand over his.

“How small and futile the old troubles seem. Do you know that I shall think of you as a hero?”

“I’m not a hero,” he said sadly. “Very few of us feel like heroes, Janet.”

“And that’s why you are heroic, dear. I know that men must be afraid. Only people without imagination fail to realise that.”

He flared up into one of his tirades.

“That newspaper stuff! What tosh! The average Englishman pats himself, says ‘Our boys are splendid,’ and goes to bed and snores. Perhaps some day they will understand, when half our manhood has sacrificed itself, and all the miserable little skunks who are shirking the ordeal are shoved into the trenches for the enlightenment of their souls. But I should like to send some of the comfortable, middle-aged people out there, the men who are so cheerful and well fed, and who say: ‘Oh, we have only to go on long enough, and we are bound to win.’ They don’t see it with the eyes of the men who do the ‘going on.’”

She poured sympathy on his bitterness, and lured him back into her heart.

“We will have our photos taken to-morrow.”

“I wish you would let me have a miniature painted for you. I suppose I might be allowed to pay for that? And for your railway ticket?”

“Perhaps.”

“We’ll arrange it to-morrow. You could have it sent out to me. And you will write every other day, Janet?”

“Yes.”

He drew her to him with sudden passion, and kissed her again and again, the long, yearning kisses of the lover.

“My dearest, my dearest——”

She clasped her hands about his neck.

“I’m so proud of you. I’m going to be brave—for your sake.”

“I shall be thinking of you day and night.”

Pierce Hammersly walked slowly back to Orchards under a star-bright sky. His heart was heavy within him, and he felt like a child, vaguely afraid of the strangeness and the horror of the unknown. No bands played. The sense of adventure, the stir and movement of strong men marching in the sunlight, the sense of great things dared and done, they inspired him no longer. He felt chilly, and most damnably depressed. The thought of leaving Janet wounded him. How warm her lips were, and how soft and desirable and dear she had felt in his arms. His soul shivered before the cynical sternness of this ghastly war, with its wounds and mud and agony, its crouching in holes, its shell-burst, mine-blasts, choking clouds of gas. He found himself wondering how Dick Hansard had died. Perhaps there was no body of Dick Hansard, but only a few strings of flesh. He shuddered.

Pierce Hammersly felt glad to reach Orchards, and to walk out of the night into the lamplit library where his father sat reading. Porteous Hammersly gave his son the keen-searching look that a physician gives a patient.

“All alone, Pater.”

“So you are back.”

Men throw such obvious remarks at each other when they are feeling ready either to curse or to weep. Pierce strolled casually to the mantelpiece, took a cigarette from the silver box, lit it, and sat down.

“Not so warm to-night. I have just come back from the Cottage.”

“It must be rather lonely for those two women up there.”

There was a pause while Pierce tried to blow smoke rings.

“I mentioned that matter to Janet, Pater.”

“About—your marriage?”

“Yes. She wouldn’t listen to me, wouldn’t hear of me making a will in her favour.”

“She had reasons?”

“A quixotic and delicate sort of pride. She said she would wait till I came back, and that she did not want to profit by—by my not coming back. She said she would not have people saying that she had made things safe for herself.”

“I see.”

“She said, too, she thought you would understand and agree with her.”

Porteous Hammersly’s face twitched with suppressed emotion.

“I do understand, and I think——”

“That’s she’s right?”

“I think she’s the finest girl I have ever known. I think she’s splendid, Pierce, absolutely splendid.”

“By God! She’s——”

He hid his face in his hands, inarticulate with emotion.

His father got up, cleared his throat, and adjusted one of the blinds. Meanwhile Pierce had mastered himself; his face seemed lit up by an inward radiance.

“Pater, if anything were to happen to me——”

“My dear boy——!”

“You wouldn’t let—you’d help her?”

Porteous came over towards his son.

“Good heavens, of course! Don’t worry, Pierce; I’d look on her as my daughter. I’d be proud—only too proud——”

“Thanks, dear old Dad. I couldn’t bear to think——”

“I would insist on helping her. I would say it was your—your wish. I’ll add something to my will, Pierce.”

Pierce sprang up, and put his hands on his father’s shoulders.

“Dear old Dad, you have always been very good to me. I—I——”

“There, there, my dear boy, I’m sure——”

They retreated, by mutual consent, into opposite corners of the room, and disposed of certain unmanly manifestations of emotion that were embarrassing and painful.

Pierce searched for another cigarette, while his father pretended to be looking for something at his desk.

“I’ll make a note of it, Pierce; I’ll write to Finlayson to-morrow.”

“Thanks, Pater.”

Porteous Hammersly sat down, and scribbled a few words on his memorandum block. His son discovered the evening paper, and made a great noise turning over the sheets.

“Not much news to-night.”

“Very little.”

“I see we have scotched another submarine.”

“Yes.”

In three minutes they were talking quite calmly and pleasantly, as though there were no such things as love and tears and death.