* * * * *

The accident broke up the working afternoon.  The injured lad was carried to hospital, where the surgeon shook his head, and refused to prophesy till twenty-four hours were over.

Captain Ellesborough disappeared, while Rachel and Janet were given tea at the woman’s hostel and shown the camp.  Rachel took an absorbed interest in it all.  This world of the new woman, with its widening horizons, its atmosphere of change and discovery, its independence of men, soothed some deep smart in her that Janet was only now beginning to realize.  And yet, Janet remembered the vicar, and had watched the talk with Ellesborough.  Clearly to be the professed enemy of man did not altogether disincline you for his company!

At any rate it seemed quite natural to Janet Leighton that, when it was time to go, and a charming girl in khaki with green facings caught the pony, and harnessed it for Mrs. Fergusson’s parting guests, Ellesborough should turn up, as soon as the farewells were over; and that she should find herself driving the pony-carriage up the hill, while Ellesborough and Rachel walked behind, and at a lengthening distance.  Once or twice she looked back, and saw that the captain was gathering some of the abounding wild flowers which had sprung up on the heels of the retreating forest, and that Rachel had fastened a bunch of them into her hat.  She smiled to herself, and drove steadily on.  Rachel was young and pretty.  Marriage with some man—­some day—­was certainly her fate.  The kind, unselfish Janet intended to “play up.”

Then, with a jerk, she remembered there was a story.  Nonsense!  An unhappy love affair, no doubt, which had happened in her first youth, and in Canada.  Well, such things, in the case of a girl with the temperament of Rachel, are only meant to be absorbed in another love affair.  They are the leaf mould that feeds the final growth.  Janet cheerfully said to herself that, probably, her partnership with Rachel would only be a short one.

The pair behind were, indeed, much occupied with each other.  The tragic incident of the afternoon seemed to have carried them rapidly through the preliminary stages of acquaintance.  At least, it led naturally to talk about things and feelings more real and intimate than generally haunt the first steps.  And in this talk each found the other more and more congenial.  Ellesborough was now half amused, half touched, by the mixture of childishness and maturity in Rachel.  One moment her ignorance surprised him, and the next, some shrewd or cynical note in what she was saying scattered the ingenue impression, and piqued his curiosity afresh.  She was indeed crassly ignorant about many current affairs in which he himself was keenly interested, and of which he supposed all educated women must by now have learnt the ABC.  She could not have given him the simplest historical outline of the great war; he saw that she was quite