Luttrell went into the bedroom where the sick man lay, so thin of face and hand, so bloodless.  But it seemed that the Fates wished to deal the Colonel one last ironic stroke, before they let him die.  For, while Luttrell yet stood in the room, Colonel Oakley’s eyes opened.  This last moment of consciousness was his, the very last; and while it still endured, suddenly, down Portland Place, with its drums beating, its soldiers singing, marched a battalion.  The song and the music swelled, the tramp of young, active, vigorous soldiers echoed and reached down the quiet street.  Colonel Oakley turned his face to his pillow and burst into tears; the bitterness of death was given him to drink in overflowing measure.  It seemed as though a jibe was flung at him.

The tramp of the battalion had not yet died away when Oakley sank again into unconsciousness.

“It was pretty rough that he should just wake up to hear that and to know that he would never have part in it, eh?” said Luttrell, speaking in a low voice more to himself than to the nurse.  “What he did for us!  Pretty hard treatment, eh?”

Luttrell left the home with one thought filling his mind—­the regiment.  It had got to justify all Oakley’s devotion; it had got somehow to make amends to him, even if he never was to know of it, for this last unfair stroke of destiny.  Luttrell walked across London, dwelling upon the qualities of individual men in the company which was his command—­how this man was quick, and that man stupid, and that other inclined to swank, and a fourth had a gift for reading maps, and a fifth would make a real marksman; and so he woke up to find himself before the bookstall in the station at Waterloo.  Then he remembered the visit he had promised, but there was no longer any time.  He took the train to the New Forest, and three days later went to France.

But of Luttrell’s visit to Colonel Oakley, Stella Croyle never knew.  And, again, very likely it would not have mattered if she had.  They were parted too widely for insight and clear vision.

* * * * *

Hillyard carried away with him a picture of Stella’s haunted and despairing face.  It was over against him as he dined at his club, gleaming palely from out of darkness, the lips quivering, the eyes sad with all the sorrows of women.  He could blame neither the one nor the other—­neither Stella Croyle nor Harry Luttrell.  One heart called to the other across too wide a gulf, and this heart on the hither side was listening to quite other voices and was deaf to her cry for help.  But Hillyard was on the road along which Millicent Splay had already travelled.  More and more he felt the case for compassion.  He carried the picture of Stella’s face home with him.  It troubled his sleep; by constant gazing upon it he became afraid....