“It isn’t; if it’s what you want most.”

He had risen.  He was going.  His hands were on her shoulders, and they were still discussing it as if it were the most momentous thing.

“Of course,” she said, “I won’t go if you feel like that about it.  I want you to fight comfy.  You mustn’t worry about me.”

“Nor you about me.  I shall be all right.  Remember—­it’s your War, too—­it’s the biggest fight for freedom—­”

“I know,” she said.

And then:  “Have you got all your things?”

“Somebody’s got ’em.”

“I haven’t given you anything.  You must have my wrist-watch.”

She unstrapped the leather band and put it on him.

“My wrist’s a whopper.”

“So’s mine.  It’ll just meet—­at the last hole.  It’s phosphorous,” she said.  “You can see the time by it in the dark.”

“I’ve nothing for you.  Except—­” he fumbled in his pockets—­“I say—­here’s the wedding-ring.”

They laughed.

“What more could you want?” she said.

He put it on her finger; she raised her face to him and he stooped and kissed her.  He held her for a minute in his arms.  But it was not like yesterday.

Suddenly his face stiffened.  “Tell them,” he said, “that I’m going.”

The British were retreating from Mons.

The German attack was not like the advance of an Army but like the travelling of an earthquake, the bursting of a sea-wall.  There was no end to the grey battalions, no end to the German Army, no end to the German people.  And there was no news of British reinforcements, or rumour of reinforcements.

“They come on like waves.  Like waves,” said Dorothea, reading from the papers.

“I wouldn’t read about it if I were you, darling,” said Frances.

“Why not?  It isn’t going to last long.  We’ll rally.  See if we don’t.”

Dorothea’s clear, hard mind had gone under for the time, given way before that inconceivable advance.  She didn’t believe in the retreat from Mons. It couldn’t go on.  Reinforcements had been sent.

Of course they had been sent.  If Frank was ordered off at twelve hours’ notice that meant reinforcements, or there wouldn’t be any sense in it.  They would stop the retreat.  We were sitting here, safe; and the least we could do for them was to trust them, and not believe any tales of their retreating.

And all the time she wondered how news of him would come.  By wire?  By letter?  By telephone?  She was glad that she hadn’t got to wait at home, listening for the clanging of the garden gate, the knock, the ringing of the bell.

She waited five days.  And on the evening of the sixth day the message came from his mother to her mother:  “Tell your dear child for me that my son was killed five days ago, in the retreat from Mons. And ask her to come and see me; but not just yet.”