“My dear child,” said Lawrence with an earnest gentleness foreign to his ordinary manner, “you misunderstood me altogether.  I liked your brother very much.  Remember, I was there when he won his decoration—­” He broke off.  An intensely visual memory had flashed over him.  Now he knew of whom Isabel had reminded him that morning:  she had her brother’s eyes.

“At the very time?  Were you really?  Do, do, do tell me about it!  Major Clowes never will—­he pretends he can’t remember.”

“Has Val never told you?”

“Hardly any more than was in the official account—­that he was left between the lines after one of our raids, and went back in spite of his wound to bring in Mr. Dale.  He had to wait till after dark?” Lawrence nodded..  “And ’under particularly trying conditions.’  Why was that?”

“Because Dale was so close to the German lines.  He was entangled in their wire.”

Isabel shuddered.  “It seems so long ago.  One can’t understand why such cruelties were ever allowed.  Of course they will never be again.”  This naive voice of the younger generation made Lawrence smile.  “And Val had to cut their wire?”

“To peel it off Dale, or peel Dale off it—­what was left of him.  He didn’t live more than twenty minutes after he was brought in.”

“Did you know Dale?”

“Not well:  he was in my cousin’s company, not in mine.”

“And was Val under fire at the time?”

“Under heavy fire.  The Boches were sending up starshells that made the place as light as day.”

“I can’t understand how Val could do it with his broken arm.”

“His arm wasn’t broken when he cut their wires.”

“Oh!  When was it then?”

Hyde flicked with his stick at the airy heads of grass that rose up thin-sown out of a burnished carpet of lady’s slipper.  His manner was even but his face was dark.  “He had it splintered by a revolver—­shot on his way home, near our lines.”

“Oh!  But the Army doctors said the shot must have been fired at close quarters?”

“There, you see I’m not much of an authority, am I?  No doubt, if they said so, they were right.  The fact is I was knocked out myself that afternoon with a rifle bullet in the ribs.  It was a hot corner for the Wintons and Dorsets.”

“Were you?  I’m sorry.”  Isabel ran her eyes with a touch of whimsical solicitude over Hyde’s tall easy figure and the exquisite keeping of his white clothes.  Difficult to connect him with the bloody disarray of war!  “Were you too left lying between the lines?”

“With a good many others, English and German.

“There was a fellow near me that hadn’t a scratch.  He was frightened—­mad with fear:  he lay up in the long grass and wept most of the day.  I never hated any one so much in my life.  I could have shot him with pleasure.”

“German, of course?”

Hyde smiled.  “German, of course.”