Sometimes her thoughts wandered fugitively to Tim.  Surely here was his chance to break from the bondage his mother had imposed upon him!  He had not written to her of late, but she felt convinced that she would have heard from Elisabeth had he volunteered.  She was a little puzzled over his silence and inaction.  He had seemed so keen last winter at Barrow, when together they had discussed this very subject of soldiering.  Could it be that now, when the opportunity offered, Tim was—­evading it?  But the thought was dismissed almost as swiftly as it had arisen, and Sara blushed scarlet with shame that the bare suspicions should have crossed her mind, even for an instant, recognizing it as the outcrop of that bitter knowledge which had cut at the very roots of her belief in men’s courage.

And there were men around her whose readiness to make the great sacrifice combated the poison of one man’s failure.  Daily she heard of this or that man whom she knew, either personally or by name, having volunteered and been accepted, and very often she had to listen to Miles Herrick’s fierce rebellion against the fact that he was ineligible, and endeavour to console him.

But it was Audrey Maynard who plumbed the full depths of bitterness in Herrick’s heart.  She had been teaching him to knit, and he was floundering through the intricacies of turning his first heel when one day he surprised her by hurling the sock, needles and all, to the other end of the room.

“There’s work for a man when his country’s at war!  My God!  Audrey, I don’t know how I’m going to bear it—­to lie here on my couch, knitting—­knitting!—­when men are out there dying!  Why won’t they take a lame man?  Can’t a lame man fire a gun—­and then die like the rest of ’em?”

Audrey looked at him pitifully.

“My dear, war takes only the best—­the youngest and the fittest.  But there’s plenty of work for the women and men at home.”

“For the women and crocks?” countered Miles bitterly.

She smiled at him suddenly.

“Yes—­for the crocks, too.”

He shook his head.

“No, Audrey, I’m an utterly useless person—­a cumberer of the ground.”

“Not in my eyes, Miles,” she answered quietly.

He met her glance, and read, at last, what—­as she told him later—­he might have read there any time during the last six months, had he chosen to look for it.

“Do you mean that, Audrey?” he asked, suddenly gripping her hands hard.  “All of it—­all that it implies?”

She slipped to her knees beside his couch.

“Oh, my dear!” she said, between laughing and crying.  “I’ve been meaning it—­’all of it’—­for ever so long.  Only—­only you won’t ask me to marry you!”

“How can I?  A lame man, and not even a rich one?”

“I believe,” said Audrey composedly, “we’ve argued both those points before—­from a strictly impersonal point of view!  Couldn’t you—­couldn’t you get over your objection to coming to live with me at Greenacres, dear?”