“My darling, I’m heartbroken to think of the way I’ve treated you,” he said.  “I think I’d better throw myself in the harbour.”

He took her hand in his and held it shakily.  Her loose sleeve slipped up; on the white arm he saw blue marks of fingers; this jerked him a little.  He had not known he had got to that yet.  Suddenly he kissed them and began to cry.

“When did I do that?”

“What?” she said guilelessly.

“Your arm—­”

“Oh, that!” she said, flushing.  “That’s nothing.  I don’t know how I did it.  Mrs. King’s mangle, I think it was.  It’s ugly.  I don’t like you to see ugly things.”  She drew the sleeve down tight.

“My poor little brave darling,” he whispered, drawing her closer, trying to make her hide her face on his shoulder as he measured the distance between his hand that was round her waist and the apron pocket.  He saw that it was hopeless.

“Marcella—­when your father was ill, did he pray?”

“Yes.  All the time.”

“I wish I could,” he murmured.

“Why not, if you want to?  Wanting to pray is a prayer, really.”

“I don’t feel fit to, Marcella.  Do you think you could pray for me, girlie?” he said, looking past her at the wall.

“I—­I don’t think I could—­out loud.  I’d feel as if I were eavesdropping.  But I can in my mind, if you like.”

“Let’s kneel down, then, like we did in the funny little tin tabernacle when we were married,” he said, and with an unsteady spring he was out of bed and kneeling by her side.  For five minutes they were very quiet, she with her face buried in the counterpane as she prayed vaguely to herself and God and her father to help him.  So intent was she that she did not feel his hand in her pocket.  She thought his look of relief when they stood up and he kissed her meant that once more he had beaten his enemy.

“Girlie—­go down and fill the bath for me!  Right full to the brim with cold water.  Like ducking in Jordan!  I feel good now.  I’m going to be clothed and in my right mind, now,” he said earnestly.  When she came back, her shoulders squared again, he had vanished.  She did not miss her purse until she went to the door to buy milk.  Luckily there was not very much in it.  Not till she heard the tale from Louis’s lips did she believe he had stolen it, and when she missed a few not very valuable but very precious articles of jewellery that had belonged to her mother she thought that his tale of enemies—­Germans and Chinese—­who were dogging him, searching for valuable Government papers, must be true, and that they had taken her few trinkets.

That night brought the climax; he had reached the limit of endurance and was brought home by two sailors who had found him on the Man-of-War Steps.  A wild southerly buster was blowing, bringing rain with it in floods.  He was drenched and so were the sailors.

“He isn’t half shikkered,” said one of the boys admiringly.  “Trying to jump in the harbour, saying the Germans was after him!  If we’d not been going back to the Astarte just then he’d have been in, sure enough.”