The sisters had been four days in London.  For Nelly, life was just bearable up to five or six o’clock in the evening because of her morning and afternoon visits to the Enquiry Office in D——­ Street, where everything that brains and pity could suggest was being done to trace the ‘missing’; where sat also that kind, tired woman, at the table which Nelly by now knew so well, with her pitying eyes, and her soft voice, which never grew perfunctory or careless.  ’I’m so sorry!—­but there’s no fresh news.’  That had been the evening message; and now the day’s hope was over, and the long night had to be got through.

That morning, however, there had been news—­a letter from Sarratt’s Colonel, enclosing letters from two privates, who had seen Sarratt go over the parapet in the great rush, and one of whom had passed him—­wounded—­on the ground and tried to stay by him.  But ’Lieutenant Sarratt wouldn’t allow it.’  ’Never mind me, old chap’—­one witness reported him as saying.  ‘Get on.  They’ll pick me up presently.’  And there they had left him, and knew no more.

Several other men were named, who had also seen him fall, but they had not yet been traced.  They might be in hospital badly wounded, or if Sarratt had been made prisoner, they had probably shared his fate.  ’And if your husband has been taken prisoner, as we all hope,’ said the gentle woman at the office—­’it will be at least a fortnight before we can trace him.  Meanwhile we are going on with all other possible enquiries.’

Nelly had those phrases by heart.  The phrases too of that short letter—­those few lines—­the last she had ever received from George, written two days before the battle, which had reached her in Westmorland before her departure.

That letter lay now on her bosom, just inside the folds of her blouse, where her hand could rest upon it at any moment.  How passionately she had hoped for another, a fragment perhaps torn from his notebook in the trenches, and sent back by some messenger at the last moment!  She had heard of that happening to so many others.  Why not to her!—­oh, why not to her?

Her heart was dry with longing and grief; her eyes were red for want of sleep.  There were strange numb moments when she felt nothing, and could hardly remember why she was in London.  And then would come the sudden smart of reviving consciousness—­the terrible returns of an anguish, under which her whole being trembled.  And always, at the back of everything, the dull thought—­’I always knew it—­I knew he would die!’—­recurring again and again; only to be dashed away by a protest no less persistent—­’No, no!  He is not dead!—­not dead! In a fortnight—­she said so—­there’ll be news—­they’ll have found him.  Then he’ll be recovering—­and prisoners are allowed to write.  Oh, my George!—­my George!’