“The war’s full of surprises,” remarked Molly reflectively.  “I never was so astonished in my life as when I found that Lester Kent’s wife believed him to be a model of all the virtues!  I wrote and told you—­didn’t I, Sara?—­that he was sent to Oldhampton Hospital?  He got smashed up, driving a motor ambulance, you know.”

“Yes, you wrote and said that he died in hospital.”

“Well, his wife came to see him, with her little boy.  She was the sweetest thing, and so plucky.  ‘My dear,’ she said to me, after it was all over, ’I hope you’ll find a husband as dear and good.  He was so loyal and true—­and now that he’s gone, I shall always have that to remember!’” Molly’s eyes had grown very big and bright.  “Oh!  Sara,” she went on, catching her breath a little, “supposing you hadn’t brought me home—­that night, she would have had no beautiful memory to help her now.”

“And yet the memory is an utterly false one—­though I suppose it will help her just the same!  It’s knowing the truth that hurts, sometimes.”  And Sara’s lips twisted a little.  “What a droll world it is—­of shame and truth all mixed up—­the ugly and the beautiful all lumped together!”

“And just now,” put in Selwyn quietly, “it’s so full of beauty.”

“Beauty?” exclaimed both girls blankly.

Selwyn nodded, his eyes luminous.

“Isn’t heroism beautiful—­and self-sacrifice?” he said.  “And this war’s full of it.  Sometimes, when I read the newspapers, I think God Himself must be surprised at the splendid things the men He made have done.”

Sara turned away, swept by the recollection of one man she knew who had nothing splendid, nothing glorious, to his credit.  Almost invariably, any discussion of the war ended by hurting her horribly.

“I’ll take that basket of flowers across to the ‘Convalescent’ now, I think,” she said, rising abruptly from her seat by the fire.

Selwyn nodded, mentally anathematizing himself for having driven her thoughts inward, and Molly, who had developed amazingly of late, tactfully refrained from offering to accompany her.

The Convalescent Hospital, situated on the crest of a hill above the town, was a huge mansion which had been originally built by a millionaire named Rattray, who, coming afterwards to financial grief, had found himself too poor to live in it when it was completed.  It had been frankly impossible as a dwelling for any one less richly dowered with this world’s goods, and, in consequence, when the place was thrown on the market, no purchaser would be found for it—­since Monkshaven offered no attraction to millionaires in general.

Since then it had been known as Rattray’s Folly, and it was not until Audrey cast covetous eyes upon it for her convalescent soldiers that the “Folly” had served any purpose other than that of a warning to people not to purchase boots too big for them.

A short cut from Sunnyside to the hospital lay through Crabtree Moor, and as Sara took her way across the rough strip of moorland, dotted with clumps of gorse and heather, her thoughts flew back to that day when she and Garth had encountered Black Brady there, and to the ridiculous quarrel which had ensued in consequence of Garth’s refusal to condone the man’s offence.  For days they had not spoken to each other.