Truly this hellish nightmare of war and hate which had arisen brought with it a brood not less terrible.  A day ago, an hour ago he would have merely laughed at the possibility of such a situation between Sylvia and himself.  Yet here it was:  they were in the middle of it now.

She looked up at him flashing with indignation, and a retort as stinging as his rose to her lips.  And then quite suddenly, all her anger went from her, as her, heart told her, in a voice that would not be silenced, the complete justice of what he had said, and the appeal that Michael refrained from making was made by her to herself.  Remorse held her on its spikes for her abominable suggestion, and with it came a sense of utter desolation and misery, of hatred for herself in having thus quietly and deliberately said what she had said.  She could not account for it, nor excuse herself on the plea that she had spoken in passion, for she had spoken, as he felt, in cold blood.  Hence came the misery in the knowledge that she must have wounded Michael intolerably.

Her lips so quivered that when she first tried to speak no words would come.  That she was truly ashamed brought no relief, no ease to her surrender, for she knew that it was her real self who had spoken thus incredibly.  But she could at least disown that part of her.

“I beg your pardon, Michael,” she said.  “I was atrocious.  Will you forgive me?  Because I am so miserable.”

He had nothing but love for her, love and its kinsman pity.

“Oh, my dear, fancy you asking that!” he said.

Just for the moment of their reconciliation, it seemed to both that they came closer to each other than they had ever been before, and the chance of the need of any such another reconciliation was impossible to the verge of laughableness, so that before five minutes were past he could make the smile break through her tears at the absurdity of the moment that now seemed quite unreal.  Yet that which was at the root of their temporary antagonism was not removed by the reconciliation; at most they had succeeded in cutting off the poisonous shoot that had suddenly sprouted from it.  The truth of this in the days that followed was horribly demonstrated.

It was not that they ever again came to the spoken bitterness of words, for the sharpness of them, once experienced, was shunned by each of them, but times without number they had to sheer off, and not approach the ground where these poisoned tendrils trailed.  And in that sense of having to take care, to be watchful lest a chance word should bring the peril close to them, the atmosphere of complete ease and confidence, in which alone love can flourish, was tainted.  Love was there, but its flowers could not expand, it could not grow in the midst of this bitter air.  And what made the situation more and increasingly difficult was the fact that, next to their love for each other, the emotion that most filled the mind of each was