In his letters to Thirza he would deplore Edward’s asceticism.  “He eats nothing, he drinks nothing, he smokes a miserable cigarette once in a blue moon.  He’s as lonely as a coot; it’s a thousand pities he ever lost his wife.  I expect to see his wings sprout any day; but—­dash it all I—­I don’t believe he’s got the flesh to grow them on.  Send him up some clotted cream; I’ll see if I can get him to eat it.”  When the cream came, he got Edward to eat some the first morning, and at tea time found that he had finished it himself.  “We never talk about Nollie,” he wrote, “I’m always meaning to have it out with him and tell him to buck up, but when it comes to the point I dry up; because, after all, I feel it too; it sticks in my gizzard horribly.  We Piersons are pretty old, and we’ve always been respectable, ever since St. Bartholomew, when that Huguenot chap came over and founded us.  The only black sheep I ever heard of is Cousin Leila.  By the way, I saw her the other day; she came round here to see Ted.  I remember going to stay with her and her first husband; young Fane, at Simla, when I was coming home, just before we were married.  Phew!  That was a queer menage; all the young chaps fluttering round her, and young Fane looking like a cynical ghost.  Even now she can’t help setting her cap a little at Ted, and he swallows her whole; thinks her a devoted creature reformed to the nines with her hospital and all that.  Poor old Ted; he is the most dreamy chap that ever was.”

“We have had Gratian and her husband up for the week-end,” he wrote a little later; “I don’t like her so well as Nollie; too serious and downright for me.  Her husband seems a sensible fellow, though; but the devil of a free-thinker.  He and poor Ted are like cat and dog.  We had Leila in to dinner again on Saturday, and a man called Fort came too.  She’s sweet on him, I could see with half an eye, but poor old Ted can’t.  The doctor and Ted talked up hill and down dale.  The doctor said a thing which struck me.  ’What divides us from the beasts?  Will power:  nothing else.  What’s this war, really, but a death carnival of proof that man’s will is invincible?’ I stuck it down to tell you, when I got upstairs.  He’s a clever fellow.  I believe in God, as you know, but I must say when it comes to an argument, poor old Ted does seem a bit weak, with his:  ‘We’re told this,’ and ’We’re told that:  Nobody mentioned Nollie.  I must have the whole thing out with Ted; we must know how to act when it’s all over.”

But not till the middle of March, when the brothers had been sitting opposite each other at meals for two months, was the subject broached between them, and then not by Robert.  Edward, standing by the hearth after dinner, in his familiar attitude, one foot on the fender, one hand grasping the mantel-shelf, and his eyes fixed on the flames, said:  “I’ve never asked your forgiveness, Bob.”

Robert, lingering at the table over his glass of port, started, looked at Edward’s back in its parson’s coat, and answered: