“She was upset and anxious about Byng, I suppose?” Stafford asked, with his head turned away from this faithfulest of friends, who would have died for the man now sitting on the stoep of Brinkwort’s house, looking into the bloom of the garden.

“Naturally,” was the reply.  Barry Whalen thought carefully of what he should say, because the instinct of the friend who loved his friend had told him that, since the night at De Lancy Scovel’s house when the name of Mennaval had been linked so hatefully with that of Byng’s wife, there had been a cloud over Rudyard’s life; and that Rudyard and Jasmine were not the same as of yore.

“Naturally she was upset,” he repeated.  “She made Al’mah go and nurse Byng.”

“Al’mah,” repeated Stafford mechanically.  “Al’mah!” His mind rushed back to that night at the opera, when Rudyard had sprung from the box to the stage and had rescued Al’mah from the flames.  The world had widened since then.

Al’mah and Jasmine had been under the same roof but now; and Al’mah was nursing Jasmine’s husband—­surely life was merely farce and tragedy.

At this moment an orderly delivered a message to Barry Whalen.  He rose to go, but turned back to Stafford again.

“She’d be glad to see you, I’m certain,” he said.  “You never can tell what a turn sickness will take in camp, and she’s looking pretty frail.  We all ought to stand by Byng and whatever belongs to Byng.  No need to say that to you; but you’ve got a lot of work and responsibility, and in the rush you mightn’t realize that she’s more ill than the chill makes her.  I hope you won’t mind my saying so in my stupid way.”

Stafford rose and grasped his hand, and a light of wonderful friendliness and comradeship shone in his eyes.

“Beau chevalier!  Beau chevalier!” was all he said, and impulsive Barry Whalen went away blinking; for hard as iron as he was physically, and a fighter of courage, his temperament got into his eyes or at his lips very easily.

Stafford looked after him admiringly.  “Lucky the man who has such a friend,” he said aloud—­“Sans peur et sans reproche!  He could not betray a “—­the waving of wings above him caught his eye—­“he could not betray an aasvogel.”  His look followed the bird of prey, the servitor of carrion death, as it flew down the wind.

He had absorbed the salt of tears and valour.  He had been enveloped in the Will that makes all wills as one, the will of a common purpose; and it had changed his attitude towards his troubles, towards his past, towards his future.

What Barry had said to him, and especially the tale of the New Zealander, had revealed the change which had taken place.  The War had purged his mind, cleared his vision.  When he left England he was immersed in egoism, submerged by his own miseries.  He had isolated himself in a lazaretto of self-reproach and resentment.  The universe was tottering because a woman had played him false.  Because of this