Her reply was merry laughter.

’You’re an old Ottoman, Dick.  You haven’t doubled Cape Turk yet, and I don’t believe you’re round Seraglio Point.  Why, women aren’t the brittle things men used to think them.  They never were, and the war has made them like whipcord.  Bless you, my dear, we’re the tougher sex now.  We’ve had to wait and endure, and we’ve been so beaten on the anvil of patience that we’ve lost all our megrims.’

She put her hands on my shoulders and looked me in the eyes.

’Look at me, Dick, look at your someday-to-be espoused saint.  I’m nineteen years of age next August.  Before the war I should have only just put my hair up.  I should have been the kind of shivering debutante who blushes when she’s spoken to, and oh!  I should have thought such silly, silly things about life . . .  Well, in the last two years I’ve been close to it, and to death.  I’ve nursed the dying.  I’ve seen souls in agony and in triumph.  England has allowed me to serve her as she allows her sons.  Oh, I’m a robust young woman now, and indeed I think women were always robuster than men . . .  Dick, dear Dick, we’re lovers, but we’re comrades too—­always comrades, and comrades trust each other.’

I hadn’t anything to say, except contrition, for I had my lesson.  I had been slipping away in my thoughts from the gravity of our task, and Mary had brought me back to it.  I remember that as we walked through the woodland we came to a place where there were no signs of war.  Elsewhere there were men busy felling trees, and anti-aircraft guns, and an occasional transport wagon, but here there was only a shallow grassy vale, and in the distance, bloomed over like a plum in the evening haze, the roofs of an old dwelling-house among gardens.

Mary clung to my arm as we drank in the peace of it.

‘That is what lies for us at the end of the road, Dick,’ she said softly.

And then, as she looked, I felt her body shiver.  She returned to the strange fancy she had had in the St Germains woods three days before.

’Somewhere it’s waiting for us and we shall certainly find it . . .  But first we must go through the Valley of the Shadow . . .  And there is the sacrifice to be made . . . the best of us.’

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

St Anton

Ten days later the porter Joseph Zimmer of Arosa, clad in the tough and shapeless trousers of his class, but sporting an old velveteen shooting-coat bequeathed to him by a former German master—­speaking the guttural tongue of the Grisons, and with all his belongings in one massive rucksack, came out of the little station of St Anton and blinked in the frosty sunshine.  He looked down upon the little old village beside its icebound lake, but his business was with the new village of hotels and villas which had sprung up in the last ten years south of the station.  He made some halting inquiries of the station people, and a cab-driver outside finally directed him to the place he sought—­the cottage of the Widow Summermatter, where resided an English intern, one Peter Pienaar.