“Take care, Lawrence!” cried Isabel.

She spoke too late.  Bernard’s hand was already raised and a glint of steel shone between his fingers.  No one was near enough to disarm him.  Unable to move without exposing Laura, Lawrence mechanically threw up his wrist on guard, but the trick of Bernard’s left-handed throw was difficult to counter, and Lawrence was bracing himself for a shock when Val stepped into the line of fire.  Selincourt uttered an exclamation of horror, and Val reeled heavily.  “For me!” said Lawrence under his breath.  He was by Val in a moment, bending over him, tender and protecting, an arm round his shoulders.  “Are you hurt, Val?  What is it, old man?”

Stafford had one hand pressed to his side.  “He meant it for you,” he said, grimacing over the words as if he had not perfect control of his facial muscles.  “Take care.  Ah! that’s better.”  Selincourt with a sweep of his arm had sent the remaining contents of the swing-tray flying across the floor.  There was no need of such violence, however, for the devil had gone out of Bernard Clowes now.  Deathly pale, his eyes blank with startled fear, his great frame seemed to break and collapse and he turned like a lost child to his wife:  Laura—­Laura . . .”

“I’m here, my darling.”  In panic, as if the police were already at the door, Laura fell on her knees by the low couch.  Come what might he was still her husband, still the man she loved, to be defended against the consequences of his own acts irrespective of his deserts.  There was much of the wife but more of the mother in the way she covered him with her arms and breast.  “No one shall touch you, no one.  It was only an accident, you never meant it, and besides Val’s only a little hurt—­”

Val, still with that wrenched grimace of pain, turned round and leant against Lawrence.  “Get me out of this,” he said weakly.  “Invent some story.  Anything, but spare her.  Get me out, I’m going to faint.”

Between them, Lawrence and Selincourt carried him out and laid him on the steps.  No one else paid any attention.  Laura was taken up with Bernard.  Mr. Stafford had shuffled over to the fire and was stooping down to warm his fingers while Isabel tried brokenly to soothe the anguish from which old and tired hearts rarely recover.  She was more frightened for him than for Val, and the grief she felt for him was a grief outside herself, which could be pitied and comforted, whereas the blow that had fallen on Val seemed to have fallen on her own life also, withering where it struck.  She suffered for her father but with Val, and this intensity of communion hardened her into steel, for it seemed as weak and vain to pity him as it would have been to pity herself if she like him had fallen under the stress of war.  The weak must first be served—­later, later there would be time to pity the strong.