‘Because I don’t feel like it,’ she said, smiling.  ’That’s all I need say.  Please don’t think me ungrateful.  You’ve offered me now a position and a home—­and you’ve given me my head all this time.  I shall never forget it.  But I’m afraid—­’

‘That now I’ve made such an ass of myself you’ll have to go?’

She thought a moment.

‘I don’t know that I need say that—­if—­if I could be sure—­’

‘Of what?  Name your conditions!’

His face suddenly lightened again.  And again a quick compunction struck her.

She looked at him gently.

’It’s only—­that I couldn’t stay here—­you will see of course that I couldn’t—­unless I were quite sure that this was dead and buried between us—­that you would forget it entirely—­and let me forget it!’

Was it fancy, or did the long Don Quixotish countenance quiver a little?

‘Very well.  I will never speak of it again.  Will that do?’ There was a long pause.  The Squire’s stick attacked a root of primroses closely, prized it out of the damp ground, and left it there.  Then he turned to his companion with a changed aspect.  ’Well, now, then—­we are as we were—­and’—­with a long half-indignant breath—­’remember I have signed that contract!’

He rose from his seat as he spoke.

They walked home together through the great wood, and across the park.  They were mostly silent.  The Squire’s words ’we are as we were’ echoed in the ears of both.  And yet both were secretly aware that something irrevocable had happened.

Then, suddenly, beating down all the personal trouble and disquiet in Elizabeth’s mind, there rushed upon her afresh, as she walked beside the Squire, that which seemed to shame all personal feeling—­the renewed consciousness of England’s death-grapple with her enemy—­the horror of its approaching crisis.  How could this strange being at her elbow be still deaf and blind to it!

* * * * *

They parted in the hall.

‘Shall I expect you at six?’ said the Squire formally.  ’I have some geographical notes I should like you to take down.’

She assented.  He went to his study, and shut himself in.  For a long time he paced up and down, flinging himself finally into a chair in front of Desmond’s portrait.  There his thoughts took shape.

’Well, my boy, I thought I’d won some trenches—­but the counter-attack has swept me out.  Where are you?  Are you still alive?  If not, I shan’t be long after you.  I’m getting old, my boy—­and this world, as the devil has made it, is not meant for me.’

He remained there for some time, his hands on his knees, staring into the bright face of his son.

Elizabeth too went to her room.  On her table lay the Times.  She took it up and read the telegrams again.  Raid and counter-raid all along the front—­and in every letter and telegram the shudder of the nearing event, ghastly hints of that incredible battlefield to come, that hideous hurricane of death in which Europe was to see once more her noblest and her youngest perish.