But the hands moved on.

“I will stay, if I may,” said Hillyard uncomfortably.  “I will go, of course, when——­” and he could not bring himself to complete the sentence.

Stella, however, added the words, though in a quieter voice and with less triumph than she had used before.

“When he comes.  Yes, do stay.  I shall be glad.”

Slowly the day drew in.  The sunlight died away from the trees in the park.  In the tiny garden great shadows fell.  The dusk gathered and Hillyard and Stella Croyle sat without a word in the darkening room.  But Stella had lost her pride of carriage.  On the mantelpiece the clock struck the hour—­six little tinkling silvery strokes.  At that moment a guard was blowing his whistle on a platform of Waterloo and a train beginning slowly to move.

“He will have missed his train,” said Stella in an unhappy whisper.  “He will be here later.”

“My dear,” replied Hillyard, and leaning forward he took and gently shook her hand.  “Soldiers don’t miss their trains.”

Stella did not answer.  She sat on until the lamps were lit in the streets outside and in this room the dusk had changed to black night.

“No, he will not come,” she said at last, in a low wail of anguish.  She rose and turned to Hillyard.  Her face glimmered against the darkness deathly white and her eyes shone with sorrow.

“It was kind and wise of you to wish to spare me,” she said.  “Oh, I can picture to myself how coldly he heard you.  He never meant to come here this afternoon.”

Stella Croyle was wrong, just as Hillyard had been.  Harry Luttrell had meant to pay his farewell visit to Stella Croyle, knowing well that he was unlikely ever to come back, and understanding that he owed her it.  But an incident drove the whole matter from his thoughts, and the incident was just one instance to show how wide a gulf now separated these two.

He had called at a nursing home close to Portland Place where a Colonel Oakley lay dying of a malignant disease.  Oakley had been the chief spirit of reviving the moral and the confidence of the disgraced Clayfords.  He had laboured unflinchingly to restore its discipline, to weld it into one mind, with dishonour to redeem, and a single arm to redeem it.  He had lived for nothing else—­until the internal trouble laid him aside.  Luttrell called at half-past three to tell him that all was well with his old battalion, and was met by a nurse who shook her head.

“The last two days he has been lying, except for a minute here and there, in a coma.  You may see him if you like, but it is a question of hours.”