It was quiet in the garden, so that, when her moment came, Veronica could time it by the striking of the clock heard through the open doorway of the house:  four strokes; and the half-hour; and then, almost on the stroke, her rush of pure, mysterious happiness.

Up till then she had been only tranquil; and her tranquillity made each small act exquisite and delightful, as her fingers tugged at the weeds, and shook the earth from their weak roots, and the palms of her hand smoothed over the places where they had been.  She thought of old Jean and Suzanne, planting flowers in the garden at Renton, and of that tranquillity of theirs that was the saddest thing she had ever seen.

And her happiness had come, almost on the stroke of the half-hour, not out of herself or out of her thoughts, but mysteriously and from somewhere a long way off.

* * * * *

She turned to nod and smile at Frances who was coming through the door with her basket, and it was then that she saw Nicholas.

He stood on something that looked like a low wall, raised between her and the ash-tree; he stood motionless, as if arrested in the act of looking back to see if she were following him.  His eyes shone, vivid and blue, as they always shone when he was happy.  He smiled at her, but with no movement of his mouth.  He shouted to her, but with no sound.

Everything was still; her body and her soul were still; her heart was still; it beat steadily.

She had started forwards to go to him when the tree thrust itself between them, and he was gone.

And Frances was still coming through the door as Veronica had seen her when she turned.  She was calling to her to come in out of the sun.

XXIV

The young men had gone—­Morton Ellis, who had said he was damned if he’d fight for his country; and Austin Mitchell who had said he hadn’t got a country; and Monier-Owen, who had said that England was not a country you could fight for.  George Wadham had gone long ago.  That, Michael said, was to be expected.  Even a weak gust could sweep young Wadham off his feet—­and he had been fairly carried away.  He could no more resist the vortex of the War than he could resist the vortex of the arts.

Michael had two pitiful memories of the boy:  one of young Wadham swaggering into Stephen’s room in uniform (the first time he had it on), flushed and pleased with himself and talking excitedly about the “Great Game”; and one of young Wadham returned from the Front, mature and hard, not talking about the “Great Game” at all, and wincing palpably when other people talked; a young Wadham who, they said, ought to be arrested under the Defence of the Realm Act as a quencher of war-enthusiasms.

The others had gone later, one by one, each with his own gesture:  Mitchell and Monier-Owen when Stephen went; Ellis the day after Stephen’s death.  It had taken Stephen’s death to draw him.