And as he swerved out of her path the woman’s laughter went after him, with a ring in it of irony and triumph.

CHAPTER XXI

OUT OF THE NIGHT

That evening as he sat in his wife’s bedroom—­the perfunctory sitting, lasting usually about a quarter of an hour—­the thought took complete possession of him.  What if he went out to the Soudan?  Other fellows were going; they could never have too many.  Men dropped off there faster than their places could be filled.  And if he died, as other fellows died?  Well, death was the supreme Artist’s god from the machine, the simplest solution of all tragic difficulties.

A gentle elegiac mood stole over him.  He looked on at his own death; he saw the grave dug hastily in the hot sand; he heard the roll of the Dead March, and the rattling of the rifles.  In all probability these details would be omitted, but they helped to glorify the dream.  He was a mourner at his own funeral, indifferent to all around him, yet voluptuously moved.  So violently did the hero and the sentimentalist unite in that strange composite being that was Nevill Tyson.

He drew his chair a little nearer to her bed.  “Molly—­supposing I wanted to go abroad again some of these days, would you very much mind?”

There was a slight quivering of the limbs under the bedclothes, but Mrs. Nevill Tyson said nothing.

“You see, going back to Thorneytoft is out of the question for you and me.  I think we made the place a bit too hot to hold us.  And you hate it, don’t you?”

She murmured some assent.

“And if I stick here doing nothing I shan’t be able to stand things much longer; I feel as if I should go off my head.  I oughtn’t to be doing nothing, a great hulking fellow like me.”

“No, no; it would never do.  But why must you go—­abroad?  Aren’t there things—­”

He felt that his only chance was to throw himself as it were naked on her sympathy.  “I must go—­sooner or later.  I can’t settle—­never could.  Traveling is in my blood and in my brain.  I’m home-sick, Molly—­home-sick for foreign countries, that’s all.  I shall come back again.  You don’t think I want to leave you, surely?”

He looked into her eyes; there was no reproach there, only melancholy intelligence.  She knew the things that are impossible.

“No.  I think you’d rather stay with me—­if you could.  When shall you go?”

He turned aside.  “I don’t know.  I mayn’t go at all.  I don’t want to talk about it any more.”

It was hopeless to talk about it.

He had found his men, fifty brave fellows in all, ordered his outfit and booked his passage, before he could make up his mind to break the news to her, for there was the risk of breaking her heart too.

And now it wanted but two days before his departure.

Coming out of the War Office he met Stanistreet.  They walked together as far as Charing Cross.