“If I saw his name in the lists this morning I shouldn’t mind.  That would end it.”

And she sent her servant to the stationer’s to stop the papers for fear lest she should see his name in the lists.

But Lawrence spared her.  He was wounded in his first engagement, and died of his wounds in a hospital at Dunkirk.

The Red Cross woman who nursed him wrote to Vera an hour before he died.  She gave details and a message.

* * * * *

“7.30.  I’m writing now from his dictation.  He says you’re to forgive him and not to be too sorry, because it was what he thought it would be (he means the fighting) only much more so—­all except this last bit.

“He wants you to tell Michael and Dicky?—­Nicky?—­that.  He says:  ’It’s odd I should be first when he got the start of me.’

“(I think he means you’re to forgive him for leaving you to go to the War.)”

* * * * *

“8.30.  It is all over.

“He was too weak to say anything more.  But he sent you his love.”

* * * * *

Vera said to herself:  “He didn’t.  She made that up.”

She hated the Red Cross woman who had been with Lawrence and had seen so much; who had dared to tell her what he meant and to make up messages.

XXIII

Nicholas had applied for a commission, and he had got it, and Frances was glad.

She had been proud of him because he had chosen the ranks instead of the Officers’ Training Corps; but she persisted in the belief that, when it came to the trenches, second lieutenants stood a better chance.  “For goodness’ sake,” Nicholas had said, “don’t tell her that they’re over the parapet first.”

That was in December.  In February he got a week’s leave—­sudden, unforeseen and special leave.  It had to be broken to her this time that leave as special as that meant war-leave.

She said, “Well, if it does, I shall have him for six whole days.”  She had learned how to handle time, how to prolong the present, drawing it out minute by minute; thus her happiness, stretched to the snapping point, vibrated.

She had a sense of its vibration now, as she looked at Nicholas.  It was the evening of the day he had come home, and they were all in the drawing-room together.  He was standing before her, straight and tall, on the hearthrug, where he had lifted the Persian cat, Timmy, out of his sleep and was holding him against his breast.  Timmy spread himself there, softly and heavily, hanging on to Nicky’s shoulder by his claws; he butted Nicky’s chin with his head, purring.

“I don’t know how I’m to tear myself away from Timmy.  I should like to wear him alive as a waistcoat.  Or hanging on my shoulder like a cape, with his tail curled tight round my neck.  He’d look uncommonly chic with all his khaki patches.”