Then he went back to France, and in due course came the Somme.  Aubrey Mannering went through the whole five months without a scratch.  He came back with a D.S.O. and a Staff appointment for a short Christmas leave, everybody, except his father, turning out to welcome him as the local hero.  Then, for a time, he went to Aldershot as the head of an Officers’ School there, and was able to come down occasionally to Chetworth or Mannering.

During that first Christmas leave he paid several visits to Chetworth, and evidently felt at home there.  To Lady Chicksands, whom most people regarded as a tiresome nonentity, he was particularly kind and courteous.  It seemed to give him positive pleasure to listen to her garrulous housekeeping talk, or to hold her wool for her while she wound it.  And as she, poor lady, was not accustomed to such attention from brilliant young men, his three days’ visit was to her a red-letter time.  With Sir Henry also he was on excellent terms, and made just as good a listener to the details of country business as to Lady Chicksands’ domestic tales.

And yet to Beryl he was in some ways more of a riddle than ever.  He talked curiously little about the war—­at least to her.  He had a way of finding out, both at Chicksands and Mannering, men who had lost sons in France, and when he and Beryl took a walk, it seemed to Beryl as though they were constantly followed by friendly furtive looks from old labourers who passed them on the road, and nodded as they went by.  But when the daily war news was being discussed he had a way of sitting quite silent, unless his opinion was definitely asked.  When it was, he would answer, generally in a rather pessimistic spirit, and escape the conversation as soon as he could.  And the one thing that roused him and put him out of temper was the easy complacent talk of people who were sure of speedy victory and talked of ‘knock-out’ blows.

Then six months later, after the capture of the Messines Ridge, in which he took part, he reappeared, and finding his father, apparently, almost intolerable, and Pamela and Desmond away, he migrated to Chetworth.  And there he and Beryl were constantly thrown together.  He never talked to her with much intimacy; he certainly never made love to her.  But suddenly she became aware that she had grown very necessary to him, that he missed her when she was away, that his eyes lit up when she came back.  A special relation was growing up between them.  Her father perceived it; so did her brother Arthur; and they had both done their best to help it on.  They were both very fond of Aubrey; and nothing could be more natural than that she should marry one who had been her neighbour and playmate from childhood.

The thing drifted on, and one day, in the depths of a summer beechwood, some look in the girl’s eyes, some note of tremulous and passionate sweetness, beyond her control, in her deep quiet voice, touched something irrepressible in him, and he turned to her with a face of intense, almost hungry yearning, and caught her hands—­’Dear—­dearest Beryl, could you—?’