“But some day, Sara, some day?” he urged.

She shook her head.

“I shall never marry anybody now, Tim.  If—­if ever I ‘get over’ this fool feeling for Garth, I know how it would leave me.  I shall be quite cold and hard inside—­like that stone”—­pointing to the Queen’s Bench.  “I wish—­I wish I had reached that stage now.”

Silently Tim held out his hand, and she laid hers within it, meeting his grave eyes.

“I won’t ever bother you again,” he said, at last, quietly.  “I think I understand, Sara, and—­and, old girl, I’m awfully sorry.  I wish I could have saved you—­that.”

He stooped his head and kissed her—­frankly, as a big brother might, and Sara, recognizing that henceforth she would find in him only the good comrade of earlier days, kissed him back.

“Thank you, Tim,” she said.  “I knew you would understand.  And, please, we won’t ever speak of it again.”

“No, we won’t speak of it again,” he answered.

He tucked his arm under hers, and they walked on together in the direction of the house.

“And now,” she said, “let’s go to Elisabeth and break it to her that we are—­both—­going out to France as soon as we can get there.”

He turned to look at her.

“You?” he exclaimed.  “You going out?  What do you mean?”

“I’m going with Lady Arronby.  I want to go—­badly.  I want to be in the heart of things.  You don’t suppose”—­with a rather shaky little laugh—­“that I can stay quietly at home in England—­and knit, do you?”

“No, I suppose you couldn’t.  But I don’t half like it.  The women who go—­out there—­have got to face things.  I shan’t like to think of you running risks—­”

She laughed outright.

“Tim, if you talk nonsense of that kind, I’ll revenge myself by urging Elisabeth to keep you at home,” she declared.  “Oh!  Tim boy, can’t you see that just now I must have something to do—­something that will fill up every moment—­and keep me from thinking!”

Tim heard the cry that underlay the words.  There was no misunderstanding it.  He squeezed her arm and nodded.

“All right, old thing, I won’t try to dissuade you.  I can guess a little of how you’re feeling.”

Sara’s interview with Elisabeth was very different from anything she had expected.  She had anticipated passionate reproaches, tears even, for an attractive women who has been consistently spoiled by her menkind is, of all her sex, the least prepared to bow to the force of circumstances.

But there was none of these things.  It almost seemed as though in that first searching glance of hers, which flashed from Sara’s face to the well-beloved one of her son, Elisabeth had recognized and accepted that, in the short space of time since these two had met, the decision concerning Tim’s future had been taken out of her hands.

It was only when, in the course of their long, intimate talk together, she had drawn from Sara the acknowledgment that she had once again refused to be Tim’s wife, that her control wavered.