Yes—­how many times through those awful days had Decies heard that heart-rending cry!  How cruelly the words had tortured him!  And here, they were repeated twenty years on—­for the identification of the son by the friend!

That afternoon Colonel Decies dispatched a cablegram addressed to a Miss Gavestone, Monksmead, Southshire, England, and containing the words, “Have found him, Kot Ghazi, bad accident, doing well, Decies,” and by the next mail Lucille, with Aunt Yvette and a maid, left Port Said, having travelled overland to Brindisi and taken passage to Egypt by the Osiris to overtake the liner that had left Tilbury several days before the cable reached Monksmead.  And in Lucille’s largest trunk was an article the like of which is rarely to be found in the baggage of a young lady—­nothing more nor less than an ancient rapier of Italian pattern!...

To Lucille, who knew her lover so well, it seemed that the sight and feel of the worshipped Sword of his Ancestors must bring him comfort, self-respect, memories, thoughts of the joint youth and happiness of himself and her.

She knew what the Sword had been to him, how he had felt a different person when he held its inspiring hilt, how it had moved him to the telling of his wondrous dream and stories of its stirring past, how he had revered and loved it ...surely it must do him good to have it?  If he were stretched upon a bed of sickness, and it were hung where he could see it, it must help him.  It would bring diversion of thought, cheer him, suggest bright memories—­perhaps give him brave dreams that would usurp the place of bad ones.

If he were well or convalescent it might be even more needful as a tonic to self-respect, a reminder of high tradition, a message from dead sires.  Yes, surely it must do him good where she could not.  If there were any really insurmountable obstacle to their—­their —­union—­the Sword could still be with him always, and say unceasingly:  “Do not be world-beaten, son of the de Warrennes and Stukeleys.  Do not despair.  Do not be fate-conquered.  Fight!  Fight!  Look upon me not as merely the symbol of struggle but as the actual Sword of your actual Fathers.  Fight Fate!  Die fighting—­but do not live defeated”—­but of course her hero Dam needed no such exhortations.  Still—­the Sword must be a comfort, a pleasure, a hope, an inspiration, a symbol.  When she brought it him he would understand.  Swords were to sever, but the Sword should be a link—­a visible bond between them, and between them again and their common past.

To her fellow-passengers Lucille was a puzzling enigma.  What could be the story of the beautiful, and obviously wealthy, girl with the anxious, preoccupied look, whose thoughts were always far away, who took no interest in the pursuits and pastimes usual to her sex and age on a long sea voyage; who gave no glance at the wares of local vendors that came aboard at Port Said and Aden; who occupied her leisure with no book, no writing, no conversation, no deck-games; and who constantly consulted her watch as though impatient of the slow flight of time or the slow progress of the ship?