“Yes, yes,” Stella Croyle interrupted.  Oh, how dense men could be to be sure!  What in the world did it matter, how or when the secret was told?

“I beg your pardon,” said Hillyard.  “But really it does matter a little.  You see, it was on our way back, when it was quite dark, so dark that really you could see little but the line of sky above the trees, and the flash of the water at the end of the stroke.  I doubt if Luttrell would have ever told me at all, if it hadn’t been for just that one fact, that we were alone together in the darkness and out on the river.”

“Yes, I was wrong,” said Stella penitently.  “I was impatient.  I am sorry.”

More and more, just because of this detail, she was ready to believe that Harry Luttrell had left her for some reason quite outside themselves, for some other reason than weariness and the swift end of passion.

“Luttrell’s father, his grandfather and many others of his name had served in the Clayford Regiment.  It was his home regiment and the tradition of the family binding from father to son, was that there should always be Luttrells amongst its officers.”

“And for that reason Harry——­” Stella interrupted impetuously.

“No, there is more compulsion than that in Harry’s case,” Hillyard took her up.  “Much more!  The Clayfords ran in the South African War, and ran badly.  They returned to England a disgraced regiment.  Now do you see the compulsion?”

Stella Croyle turned the problem over in her mind.

“Yes, I think I do,” she said, but still was rather doubtful.  Then she looked at the problem through Harry Luttrell’s eyes.

“Yes, I understand.  The regiment must recover its good name in the next war.  It was an obligation of honour on Harry to take his commission in it, to bear his part in the recovery.”

“Yes.  I told you, didn’t I?  Harry Luttrell was cradled in tradition.”

Hillyard saw Mrs. Croyle’s face brighten.  Now she had the key to Harry Luttrell.  He had joined the Clayfords.  And what was his fear at Stockholm?  The slovenly soldier!  Yes, he had given her the real reason after all during that dinner on the balcony at Hasselbacken.  He feared to become the slovenly soldier if he idled longer in England.  It was not because he was tired of her, that the separation had come.  Thus she reasoned, and she reasoned just in one little respect wrong.  She had the real secret without a doubt, that “something else,” which Sir Charles Hardiman divined but could not interpret.  But she did not understand that Harry Luttrell saw in her, one of the factors, nay the chief of the factors which were converting him into that thing of contempt, the slovenly soldier.

“Thank you,” she said to Hillyard with a smile.  She stood aside now from the door.  “It was kind of you to bring me home and talk with me for a little while.”