“Oh, Uncle Bob, I’m so unhappy!  I feel so sorry for him.  And—­and—­the worst is, I don’t really understand....  I don’t see what worries him.  Our religion is good enough, I’m sure.  Oh, I hate those beasts of men out there!  Peter’s too good for them.  I wish he’d never gone.  I feel as if he’d never come back!”

“There, there, my dear,” said the old soldier, uncomfortably.  “Don’t take on so.  He’ll find his feet, you know.  It’s not so bad as that.  You can trust him, can’t you?”

She nodded vigorously.  “But what do you think of it all?” she demanded.

Sir Robert Doyle cleared his throat.  “Well,” he began, but stopped.  To him it was an extraordinarily hard thing to speak of religion, partly because he cherished so whole-heartedly what he had got, and partly because he had never formulated it, probably for that very reason.  Sir Robert could hardly have told his Maker what he believed about Him.  When he said the Creed he always said it with lowered voice and bowed head, as one who considered very deeply of the matter, but in fact he practically never considered at all....

“Well,” he began again, “you see, dear, it’s a strange time out there, and it is a damned unpleasant age, if you’ll excuse me.  People can’t take anything these days without asking an infernal number of questions.  Some blessed Socialist’ll begin to ask why a man should love his mother next, and, not getting a scientific answer, argue that one shouldn’t.  As for the men, they’re all right, or they used to be.  ’Love the Brotherhood.  Fear God.  Honour the King’—­that’s about enough for you and me, I take it, and Graham’ll find it’s enough for him.  And he’ll play the game, and decent men will like him and get—­er—­helped, my dear.  That’s all there is to it.  But it’s a pity,” added the old Victorian Regular, “that these blessed labour corps, and rest camps, and all the rest of it, don’t have parade services.  The boy’s bound to miss that.  I’m hanged if I don’t speak about it!...  And that reminds me....  Good Lord, it’s ten o’clock!  I must go.”

He started up, Hilda rose, smiling a little.

“That’s better,” said the old fellow; “must be a man, what?  It’s all a bit of the war, you know.”

“Oh, Uncle Bob, you are a dear.  You do cheer one up, somehow.  I wish men were more like you.”

“No, you don’t, my dear, don’t you think it.  I’m a back number, and you know it, as well as any.”

“You’re not, Uncle Bob.  I won’t have you say it.  Give me a kiss and say you don’t mean it.”

“Well, well, Hilda, there is life in the old dog yet, and I must be off and show it.  No, I won’t have another, not before duty.  Good-night, dear, and don’t worry.”

Hilda saw him off, and waved her hand from the door.  Then she went back slowly to the study and looked round.  She stood a few moments and then switched off the lights, and went out and slowly upstairs.  The maid was in the bedroom, and she dismissed her, keeping her face turned away.  In front of her glass, she held her letter irresolutely a moment, and then folded it and slipped it into a drawer.  She lifted a photo from the dressing-table and looked at it for a few minutes earnestly.  Then she went to her window, threw it up, and leaned on the sill, staring hard over the dark and empty park.