Then she put on coat and hat, jamming her hat down on her head, and said something that Cissie did not immediately understand.

“He’ll have his turn in the trenches soon enough.  Now that he’s made up his mind....  He might have done it sooner....”

She turned her back as though she had forgotten them.  She stood for a moment as though her feet were wooden, not putting her feet as she usually put her feet.  She took slow, wide, unsure steps.  She went out—­like something that is mortally injured and still walks—­into the autumnal sunshine.  She left the door wide open behind her.

Section 4

And Cissie, with eyes full of distress for her sister, had still to grasp the fact that Direck was wearing a Canadian uniform....

He stood behind her, ashamed that in such a moment this fact and its neglect by every one could be so vivid in his mind.

Section 5

Cissie’s estimate of her sister’s psychology had been just.  The reverie of revenge had not yet taken a grip upon Letty’s mind sufficiently strong to meet the challenge of this conclusive evidence of Teddy’s death.  She walked out into a world of sunshine now almost completely convinced that Teddy was dead, and she knew quite well that her dream of some dramatic and terrible vindication had gone from her.  She knew that in truth she could do nothing of that sort....

She walked out with a set face and eyes that seemed unseeing, and yet it was as if some heavy weight had been lifted from her shoulders.  It was over; there was no more to hope for and there was nothing more to fear.  She would have been shocked to realise that her mind was relieved.

She wanted to be alone.  She wanted to be away from every eye.  She was like some creature that after a long nightmare incubation is at last born into a clear, bleak day.  She had to feel herself; she had to stretch her mind in this cheerless sunshine, this new world, where there was to be no more Teddy and no real revenge nor compensation for Teddy.  Teddy was past....

Hitherto she had had an angry sense of being deprived of Teddy—­almost as though he were keeping away from her.  Now, there was no more Teddy to be deprived of....

She went through the straggling village, and across the fields to the hillside that looks away towards Mertonsome and its steeple.  And where the hill begins to fall away she threw herself down under the hedge by the path, near by the stile into the lane, and lay still.  She did not so much think as remain blank, waiting for the beginning of impressions....

It was as it were a blank stare at the world....

She did not know if it was five minutes or half an hour later that she became aware that some one was looking at her.  She turned with a start, and discovered the Reverend Dimple with one foot on the stile, and an expression of perplexity and consternation upon his chubby visage.