What did it matter what he had done?  He was hers.  He was hers.  And, O God, how she wanted him!  How gladly in that hour would she have yielded him all—­all that she had to offer!

There came a quiet step without, a steady hand on the door.  She started up with a wild hope clamouring at her heart.  Might he not be there also?  It was possible!  Surely it was possible!

She took a quick step forward.  No conventional word would rise to her lips.  They only stiffly uttered the one name, “Piers!”

And Crowther answered her, just as though no interval of more than a year lay between them and the old warm friendship.  “He left for the Front today.”

With the words he reached her, and she remembered later the sustaining strength with which his hands upheld her when she reeled beneath the blow.

He put her down again in the chair, and knelt beside her, for she clung to him convulsively, scarcely knowing what she did.

“He ought to have let you know,” he said.  “But he wouldn’t be persuaded.  I believe—­right up to the last—­he hoped he would hear something of you.  But you know him, his damnable pride,—­or was it chivalry this time?  On my soul, I scarcely know which.  He behaved almost as if he were under an oath not to make the first advance.  I am very sorry, Avery.  But my hands were tied.”

He paused, and she knew that he was waiting for a word from her—­of kindness or reproach—­some intimation of her feelings towards himself.  But she could only utter voicelessly, “I shall never see him again.”

He pressed her icy hands close in his own, but he said no word of hope.  He seemed to know instinctively that it was not the moment.

“You can write to him,” he said.  “You can write now—­tonight.  The letter will reach him in a few days at most.  He calls himself Beverley—­Private Beverley.  Let me give you some tea, and you can sit down and write straight away.”

Kindly and practical, he offered her the consolation of immediate action; and the crushing sense of loss began gradually to lose its hold upon her.

“I am going to tell you everything—­all I know,” he said.  “I told him I should do so if you came to me.  I only wish you had come a little sooner, but that is beside the point.”

Again he paused.  Her eyes were upon him, but she said nothing.

Finding her hold had slackened, he got up, lighted a lamp, and sat down with its light streaming across his rugged face.

“I don’t know what you have been thinking of me all this time,” he said, “if you have stooped to think of me at all.”

“I have often thought of you,” Avery answered.  “But I had a feeling that you—­that you—­” she hesitated—­“that you could scarcely be in sympathy with us both,” she ended.

“I see.”  Crowther’s eyes met hers with absolute directness.  “But you realize that that was a mistake,” he said.

She answered him in the affirmative.  Before those straight eyes of his she could not do otherwise.