’Let me sit a little first.  It’s all so lovely.  Nelly dropped into the soft springy turf, dried by a mild east wind, and lay curled up under a rock, every tremulous nerve in her still frail body played on by the concert of earth and sky before her.  It was May; the sky was china-blue, and the clouds sailed white upon it.  The hawthorns too were white upon the fell-side, beside the ageing gold of the gorse, while below, the lake lay like roughened silver in its mountain cup, and on the sides of Nab Scar, below the screes, the bronze of the oaks ran in and out among the feathery green of the larch plantations, or the flowering grass of the hay-meadows dropping to the lake.  The most spiritual moment of the mountain spring was over.  This was earth in her moment of ferment, rushing towards the fruition of summer.

Nelly’s youth was keenly, automatically conscious of the physical pleasure of the day; except indeed for recurrent moments, when that very pleasure revived the sharpness of grief.  Soon it would be the anniversary of her wedding day.  Every hour of that day, and of the honeymoon bliss which followed it, seemed to be still so close to her.  Surely she had only to put out her hand to find his, and all the horror and the anguish swept away.  Directly she shut her eyes on this spring scene, she was in that other life, which had been, and therefore must still be.

But she had not been talking of him with Cicely.  She very seldom talked of him now, or of the past.  She kept up correspondence with half a dozen men of his company—­the brother officer to whom Sarratt had given his last letter—­a sergeant, and three or four privates, who had written to her about him.  She had made friends with them all, especially with the young lieutenant.  They seemed to like hearing from her; and she followed all their migrations and promotions with a constant sympathy.  One of them had just written to her from a hospital at Boulogne.  He had been seriously wounded in a small affair near Festubert early in May.  He was getting better he said, but he hardly cared whether he recovered or not.  Everybody he cared for in the regiment had ‘gone west’ in the fighting of the preceding month.  No big push either,—­just many little affairs that came to nothing—­it was ‘damned luck!’ There was one of his officers that he couldn’t get over—­he couldn’t get over ‘Mr. Edward’ being killed.  He—­the writer—­had been Mr. Edward’s servant for a month or two—­having known his people at home—­and a nicer young fellow never stepped.  ’When I go back, I’m going to look for Mr. Edward—­they say he was buried close to the trenches where he fell, and I’m going to put him in some quiet place; and then when the war’s over we can bring him back to Baston Magna, and lay him with his own people in Baston churchyard.’

‘I wonder who Mr. Edward was,’ said Nelly to herself, with half shut eyes.  She had entirely forgotten Cicely’s neighbourhood.  But Cicely turned round, and asked her what she was thinking of.  Nelly repeated the letter, and Cicely suddenly shewed agitation—­’Edward!—­Baston Magna!—­he means Edward Longmore!’