Sara remained at Barrow until Tim had volunteered and been accepted, and the settlement of her own immediate plans synchronizing with this last event, it came about that it was only two hours after Tim’s departure that she, too, bade farewell to Elisabeth, in order to join up in London with Lady Arronby’s party.

Elisabeth stood at the head of the great flight of granite steps at Barrow and waved her hand as the car bore Sara swiftly away, and across the latter’s mind flashed the memory of that day, nearly a year ago, when she herself had stood in the same place, waiting to welcome Elisabeth to her new home.

The contrast between then and now struck her poignantly.  She recalled Elisabeth as she had been that day—­gracious, smiling, queening it delightfully over her two big men, husband and son, who openly worshipped her.  Now, there remained only a great empty house, and that solitary figure on the doorstep, standing there with white face and lips that smiled perfunctorily.

Elisabeth turned slowly back into the house as the car disappeared round the curve of the drive.  For her, the moment was doubly bitter.  One by one, husband, son, and the woman whom she had ardently longed to see that son’s wife, had been claimed from her by the pitiless demands of the madness men call War.

But there was still more for her to face.  There was the utter downfall of all her hopes, the defeat of all her purposes.  She had striven with the whole force that was in her to assure Tim’s happiness.  To compass this, she had torn down the curtain of the past, proclaiming a man’s shame and hurling headlong into the dust the new life he had built up for himself, and with it had gone a woman’s faith, and trust, and happiness.

And it had all been so futile!  Two lives ruined, and the purchase price paid in tears of blood; and, after all, Tim’s happiness was as utterly remote and beyond attainment as though no torrent of disaster had been let loose to further it!  Elisabeth had bartered her soul in vain.

In the solitude which was all the war had left her, she recognized this, and, since she was normally a woman of kind and generous impulses, she suffered in the realization of the spoiled and mutilated lives for which she was responsible.

Not that she would have acted differently were the same choice presented to her again.  She did not want to hurt people, but the primitive maternal instinct, which was the pivot of her being, blinded her to the claims of others if those claims reacted adversely on her son.

Only now, in the bitterness of defeat, as she looked back upon her midnight interview with Garth Trent, she was conscious of a sick repugnance.  It had not been a pleasant thing, that thrusting of a knife into an old wound.  This, too, she had done for Tim’s sake.  The pity of it was that Garth had suffered needlessly—­uselessly!

She had thought the issue of events hung solely betwixt him and her son, and, with her mind concentrated on this idea, she had overlooked the possibility of any other outcome.  But the acceptance of an unexpected sequence had been forced upon her—­Sara would never marry any one now!  Elisabeth recognized that all her efforts had been in vain.