“I think you’re going to break her heart,” Crowther said gravely.

“That’s because you don’t understand,” Piers made steady reply.  “Nothing will alter so long as I stay.  But this war is going to alter everything.  We shall none of us come out of it as we went in.  When I come back—­things will be different.”

He spoke sombrely.  The boyish ardour had gone out of him.  Something of fatefulness, something of solemn realization, of steadfast fortitude, had taken its place.

“I tell you, Crowther,” he said, “I am not doing this thing without weighing the cost.  But—­I haven’t much to lose, and I’ve all to gain.  Even if it doesn’t do—­what I hope, it’ll steady me down, it’ll make a man of me—­and not—­a murderer.”

His voice sank on the last word.  He freed himself from Crowther’s hold and turned away.

Once more he opened the window to the roar of London’s life; and so standing, with his back to Crowther, he spoke again jerkily, with obvious effort.  “Do you remember telling me that something would turn up?  Well,—­it has.  I’m waiting to see what will come of it.  But—­if it’s any satisfaction to you to know it—­I’ve got clear of my own particular hell at last.  I haven’t got very far, mind, and it’s a beastly desert road I’m on.  But I know it’ll lead somewhere; so I shall stick to it now.”

He paused a moment; then flung round and faced Crowther with a certain air of triumph.

“Meantime, old chap, don’t you worry yourself about either of us!  My wife will go to her friend Mrs. Lorimer till I come home again.  Then possibly, with any luck, she’ll come to me.”

He smiled with the words and came back to the table.  “May I have a drink?” he said.

Crowther poured one out for him in silence.  Somehow he could not speak.  There was something about Piers that stirred him too deeply for speech just then.  He lifted his own glass with no more than a gesture of goodwill.

“I say, don’t be so awfully jolly about it!” laughed Piers.  “I tell you it’s going to end all right.  Life is like that.”

His voice was light, but it held an appeal to which Crowther could not fail to respond.

“God bless you, my son!” he said.  “Life is such a mighty big thing that even what we call failure doesn’t count in the long run.  You’ll win through somehow.”

“And perhaps a little over, what?” laughed Piers.  “Who knows?”

“Who knows?” Crowther echoed, with a smile.

But he could not shake free from the chill foreboding that had descended upon him, and when Piers had gone he stood for a long time before his open window, wrestling with the dark phantom, trying to reason away a dread which he knew to be beyond all reasoning.

And all through the night that followed, those words of Piers’ pursued him, marring his rest:  “It’s a beastly desert road I’m on, but I know it’ll lead somewhere.”  And the high courage of his bearing!  The royal confidence of his smile!