That was really the puzzle.  George Sarratt was dying.  Why not let poor Nelly have her last weeks with him in peace, and then—­in time—­marry her safely and lawfully to Willy?

But Cicely had again some inkling of Bridget’s probable reply.  She had not been intimate with Nelly for more than a year without realising that she was one of those creatures—­so rare in our modern world—­who do in truth live and die by their affections.  The disappearance of her husband had very nearly killed her.  In the first winter after he was finally reported as ‘Missing—­believed killed,’ and when she had really abandoned hope, the slightest accident—­a bad chill—­an attack of childish illness—­any further shock—­might have slit the thin-spun life in a few days or weeks.  The Torquay doctor had told Hester that she was on the brink of tuberculosis, and if she were exposed to infection would certainly develop it.  Since then she had gained greatly in vitality and strength.  If only Fate had left her alone!  ’With happiness and Willy, she’d have been all right!’ thought Cicely, who was daily accustomed to watch the effect of mind on body in her brother’s hospital.  But now, with this fresh and deeper tragedy before her—­tearing at the poor little heart—­crushing the life again out of the frail being—­why, the prospects of a happy ending were decidedly less.  The odious Bridget might after all have acted intelligibly, though abominably.

As to the history of Sarratt’s long disappearance, Cicely found that very little was known.

‘We don’t question him,’ said the Sister.  ’It only exhausts him; and it wouldn’t be any good.  He may tell his wife something more, of his own accord, but we doubt whether he knows much more than he told Dr. Howson.  He remembers being wounded at Loos—­lying out undiscovered, he thinks for two days—­then a German hospital—­and a long, long journey.  And that’s practically all.  But just lately—­this week, actually!—­Dr. Howson has got some information, through a family of peasants living near Cassel, behind the British lines.  They have relations across the Belgian border, and gradually they have discovered who the man was who came over the frontier with Mr. Sarratt.  He came from a farm, somewhere between Brussels and Courtrai, and now they’ve managed to get a letter through from his brother.  You know the man himself was shot just as they reached the British lines.  But this letter really tells a good deal.  The brother says that they found Mr. Sarratt almost dead,—­and, as they thought, insane—­in a wood near their house.  He was then wearing the uniform of a British officer.  They guessed he was an escaped prisoner, and they took him in and hid him.  Then news filtered through to them of two English officers who had made their escape from a hospital train somewhere south-west of Brussels; one slightly wounded, and one severely; the severely wounded man suffering also from shell-shock.  And the slightly wounded man was shot, while the other escaped.  The train, it was said, was lying in a siding at the time—­at the further edge of the forest bordering their farm.  So, of course, they identified the man discovered by them as the severely wounded officer.  Mr. Sarratt must have somehow just struggled through to their side of the forest, where they found him.