She shrank from his look.  “Piers!  Not—­not a European war!”

He straightened himself slowly.  “Yes,” he said.  “It will be that.  But there’s nothing to be scared about.  It’ll be the salvation of the Empire.”

“Piers!” she gasped again through white lips.  “But modern warfare!  Modern weapons!  It’s Germany of course?”

“Yes, Germany.”  He stretched up his arms with a wide gesture and let them fall.  “Germany who is going to cut out all the rot of party politics and bind us together as one man!  Germany who is going to avert civil war and teach us to love our neighbours!  Nothing short of this would have saved us.  We’ve been a mere horde of chattering monkeys lately.  Now—­all thanks to Germany!—­we’re going to be men!”

“Or murderers!” said Avery.

The word broke from her involuntarily, she scarcely knew that she had uttered it until she saw his face.  Then in a flash she saw what she had done, for he had the sudden tragic look of a man who has received his death-wound.

He made her a curious stiff bow as if he bent himself with difficulty.  His face at that moment was whiter than hers, but his eyes glowed red with a deep anger.

“I shall remember that,” he said, “when I go to fight for my country.”

With the words he turned to the door.  But she cried after him, dismayed, incoherent.

“Oh Piers, you know—­you know—­I didn’t mean that!”

He did not pause or look back.  “Nevertheless you said it,” he rejoined in a tone that made her feel as if he had flung an icy shower of water in her face; and the next moment she heard his quick tread on the garden path and realized that he was gone.

It was useless to attempt to follow him.  Her knees were trembling under her.  Moreover, she knew that she must return to Jeanie.  White-lipped, quivering, she moved to the stairs.

He had utterly misunderstood her; she had but voiced the horrified thought that must have risen in the minds of thousands when first brought face to face with that world-wide tragedy.  But he had read a personal meaning into her words.  He had deemed her deliberately cruel, ungenerous, bitter.  That he could thus misunderstand her set her heart bleeding afresh.  Oh, they were better apart!  How was it possible that there could ever be any confidence, any intimacy, between them again?

Tears, scalding, blinding tears ran suddenly down her face.  She bowed her head in her hands, leaning upon the banisters....

A voice called to her from above, and she started.  What was she doing, weeping here in selfish misery, when Jeanie—­Swiftly she commanded herself and mounted the stairs.  The nurse met her at the top.

“The little one isn’t so well,” she said.  “I thought she was asleep, but I am afraid she is unconscious.”

“Oh, nurse, and I left her!”

There was a sound of such heart-break in Avery’s voice that the nurse’s grave face softened in sympathy.