The Parts Men Play

by Beverley Baxter

CHAPTER XVIII.

ELISE.

I.

Early next morning, in a large military ward of a London hospital, Austin Selwyn woke from a sleep that had been charged with black dreams, and tried to recall the events leading to his present whereabouts.

By slow, tortuous process he reconstructed the previous evening as far as the moment when he had heard the warning guns. After that the incidents grew dim, and faded into incoherency. He seemed to remember rushing somewhere in a motor-vehicle. He distinctly recalled seeing a policeman in Trafalgar Square. Yes, that was very clear—quite the most vivid impression of the whole night, indeed. He would hang on to that policeman.

With the care of an Arctic explorer establishing his base before going farther into terra incognita, he attached the threads of his wandering mind to that limb of the law, and groped in all the directions of his memory's compass. But it was of no avail. Tired out with the futile efforts he had made, his bandaged head sank back in the pillows, and the vivid policeman in Trafalgar Square was reluctantly surrendered as a negligible means of solution.

When he next awoke, it was to the sound of many voices. There were two that were very close—one on either side of him, in fact. Affecting sleep, Selwyn listened carefully.

'Wot's that you say, Jock?' said a Cockney voice to his left.

'I was obsairvin',' said the other, 'that Number Twenty-sax is occupied this mornin'.'

'Ow yus, so it is. I was 'oping as 'ow me pal the Duke of Mudturtle would buy the plice next to mine. But he don't look a bad cove, wot you can see under 'is farncy 'ead-dress.'

'I dinna think he can be o' the airmy. His skin's as pale as a lassie in love.'

'In the army, Jock? Don't hinsult 'im. 'E's one of the 'eroes of the 'ome front—hindispensibles, they calls 'em.'

'Weel, weel, noo,' expostulated the Scot, 'dinna tak' ower muckle for granted. We canna a' gang tae the war, or wha wud bide at hame an' mak the whusky?'

'By Gar!' said a third patient opposite, sitting up suddenly and speaking in the disjointed but strangely musical dialect of the French-Canadian, 'she is a wise feller, dis Scoachie.'

'Bonn swoir, Frenchy,' said the Cockney graciously. ''Ow alley you mantenongs?'

'Verra good, Tommee. How is de godam bow bells?'

'Well, the last toime I sees me old side-kick the Lord Mayor, 'e says as 'ow they was took by a Canadian for a soovenir.'

'Na,' said the Scotsman reprovingly; 'I'm thinkin' yon's exaggerated.'

'By Gar!' said the French-Canadian. 'See, the orderly come now with water for shav'. Back in de bush or on de long portage I shav' once, twice, perhaps tree time a month. Always before I meet my leetle girl I shav'. But when I say good-bye and go to war—by gollies! de army make me for do it every day. My officier, he say, "What for you no shav' dis morning?" "Sair," I say, "I no kees de Boche—I keel him." He say noding to dat excep', "Look at you. I shav' every day. Do you preten' I doan' fight?" "Well," I say, "if de cap feets you, smoke it." And for no reason he give me tree time extra for carry de godam ration.'

At this stage the arrival of wash-basins interrupted further anecdote and philosophy, and the entire ward became animated with soldiers performing their ablutions, some sitting up in bed, others on the edge of their beds, and a few so weak that they could just turn painfully on their side and wait for other hands to help.

A burst of hearty greetings told Selwyn that some one must have entered the ward, and a few minutes later he felt the presence of a nurse beside him.

'Good-morning,' she said, gently touching him on the shoulder. 'How is your head feeling?'

He opened his eyes and looked into the face bending over his. 'I think it's all right,' he said weakly. 'But, nurse, won't you tell me how I got here?'

She dipped a cloth into a basin and bathed his hands and face.

'You were hit by a piece of shrapnel in last night's air-raid. I wasn't on duty when you came in, but the night-sister said you were quite delirious—though you seem ever so much better this morning, don't you? I'll take your temperature, and after you've had some breakfast I'll put a new dressing on your wound.'

She was just going to insert the thermometer between his lips, when he stopped her with his hand. 'Nurse,' he said, 'why was I brought here—among soldiers?'

'Because every hospital is filled to overflowing. The casualties are so heavy just now.' Her voice was still kind, but there was a look of resentment in her eyes at his question.

'Please don't misunderstand me,' said Selwyn wearily. 'It is only the feeling that I have no right here. This cot should be for a soldier, and I'm a civilian. I'm an American, and—and if you only knew'——

'Just a minute, now, until we get this temperature, and then you can tell me all about it.'

With his lips silenced, but his doubts by no means so, he watched her move down the ward in commencement of the countless duties of her day. She was a woman of thirty-three or thirty-four years, still young, and possessed of a womanliness that softened her whole appearance with a tranquil restfulness. But beneath her eyes and in the texture of the skin faint wrinkles were showing, thinly pencilled protests against overwork, that no treatment could ever eradicate. On the red collar of her uniform was a badge which told that she had gone to France with the first little army of Regulars in 1914.

Noting her calloused hands and the too rapid approach of life's midsummer, Selwyn watched her, and wondered what recompense could be offered for those things. In ordinary life, given the privileges and the opportunities which she deserved, she would have been another of those glorious English women whose beauty is nearest the rose. She would have been a wife to grace any home, and as a mother her charm would have been twofold. But for more than two years incessant toil and endless suffering had been the companions of her days, and the not over-strong body was giving to the ordeal.

But as his heavy thoughts drifted slowly through this channel, he saw grinning patients who were well enough get out of bed to help her. As if she carried some magic gem of happiness, her soft voice and deft touch brought smiles to eyes that had been scorched in the flames of hell. Men looked up, and seeing her, believed once more in life; and hope crept into their hearts. Men in the great shadowy valley murmured like a child in its sleep when a ray of morning sunshine, stealing through the curtains, plays upon its face.

And of the many things which Selwyn learned that day, one was that those ministering angels, those women of limitless spirit and sympathy, have memories of mute, unspoken gratitude, beside which the proudest triumphs of the greatest beauties are but the tawdry, tinsel glory of a pantomime queen.

II.

After the nurse had taken the thermometer from Selwyn and marked his temperature on a chart which she placed beside him, breakfast was brought in, and he was propped up with pillows.

'Guid-mornin',' said the Highlander. 'I hope ye're nane the waur o' your expeerience.'

'Not 'im,' broke in the Cockney, eating his porridge with great relish.
'It done 'im good.'

'I am very well,' said Selwyn haltingly. 'I hope my arrival did not disturb any of you last night.'

At the sound of his carefully nuanced Bostonian accent there was a violent dumb-play of smoothing the hair and arranging the coats of pyjamas, while one Tommy placed a penny in his eye in lieu of a monocle.

'I was 'oping,' said the Cockney, with a solemn wink to the gathering, 'as 'ow Number 26 would be took by a toff, and, blime, if it ain't! It were gettin' blinkin' lonesome for me with only Jock 'ere and Frenchy opposite, who ain't bad blokes in their wy, but orful crude for my likin'.'

'Where did it hit ye?' asked the Scot encouragingly.

'On the head,' said Selwyn, pointing to his bandage.

'Mon, mon, that's apt to be dangerous.'

'Nah then!' cried the Cockney, reaching for his temperature-chart, 'we'll open the mornink proper with the 'Ymn of 'Ate. In cise you don't know the piece, m'lud, you can read it off your temperacher-ticket. Steady now—everybody got a full breath? Gow!'

With great zest all the patients who were able to sit up broke into a discordant jumble of scales as they followed the course of their temperatures up and down the chart. Gradually, one by one, they fell out and resumed their breakfast, until the Scotsman was the only one singing.

'Ye ken,' he said, pausing temporarily and looking at Selwyn, 'yon should be rendered wi' proper deegnity.' With which explanatory comment he finished the last six notes, and solemnly replaced the chart on the ledge behind him, as if it were a copy of Handel's Messiah.

The last note had hardly died away when a violent controversy broke out between a pair of Australian soldiers on one side and almost the entire ward on the other. The thing had started by one of the Anzacs venturing the modest opinion that if Britain had had a million Australian troops, they, the present gathering, would be 'hoch, hoching' in Berlin (apparently a delightful prospect) instead of being cooped up in a London hospital.

The little Cockney was just going to utter a crushing sarcasm, the French-Canadian had taken in a perfectly stupendous breath, the Highlander was calmly tasting the flavour of his own reply, when the impending torrent was broken by the entrance of the chaplain, who wished every one a somewhat sanctimonious 'Good-day.'

'I shall read,' he said, putting on a pair of glasses, 'the latest communiqué from the front. We have done very well. The news is quite good—quite good. "This morning, on a front of three miles, after an intense artillery preparation, the Australians"'——

''OORAY!' roared the Cockney.

The glasses popped off the chaplain's startled nose, and he just managed by a brilliant bit of juggling to rescue them before they reached the floor.

'I—I,' he ventured, smiling blandly, 'am delighted at your enthusiasm, but you did not let me finish. "This morning"—um, um, ah—"three miles"—um, um, yes—"three miles, after an intense artillery preparation, the Australians"'——

''OORAY!' It was a deafening roar from the whole crowd.

'"The Australians"'——

'OORAY!'

'"The"'——

'Oo'——

Really, men, you must control yourselves. We are all glad and sustained by any victory, however slight, but you must not give way to unmeaning boisterousness. "This morning, on a front of three miles, after an intense artillery preparation, the Australians"'——

There was a medley of submerged, prolonged snores. The chaplain looked up indignantly. With the exception of Selwyn and the two Australians, every one had followed the lead of the Cockney and disappeared underneath the bed-clothes.

'This,' said the good man—'this frivolity at such a harrowing moment in our country's destiny is neither seemly nor respectful. Cheerfulness is admirable, until it descends to horseplay.'

With which parting salvo the worthy chaplain, who had never been to France, and who was doing the best he could according to his clerical upbringing, left his unruly flock, taking the communiqué with him.

A little later the doctor made his rounds, pronouncing Selwyn's wound as not dangerous, but assuring him he was lucky to be alive. Another inch either way and—— Passing on to the Scotsman, he stayed a considerable length of time; but as the screen was set for the examination, the American had no way of knowing its nature.

And so, with constant badinage, seldom brilliant, but never unkind, the morning wore on. It was nearly noon when Selwyn saw a wheeled stretcher brought into the ward and the Highlander lifted on to it.

'Jock,' said the little Cockney, 'I 'opes as 'ow everythink will come out orlright.'

'By Gar, Scoachie!' cried the French-Canadian, 'I am sorree. You are one dam fine feller, Scoachie.'

'Dinna worry yersel's,' said the man from the North. 'I'm rare an' lucky that it's to be ma richt leg an' no the left, for that richt shank o' mine was aye a wee thing crookit at the knee, and didna dae credit tae the airchitecture o' tither ane.'

Thus, amid the rough encouragement of his fellows, and by no means unconscious of the dignity of his position, the Highland soldier was taken away to the operating-room.

The French-Canadian made a remark to Selwyn, but it was not until the second repetition that he heard him.

III.

About three o'clock that afternoon a little stream of visitors began to arrive, and Thomas Atkins, with his extraordinary adaptability, gravely, if somewhat inaccurately, answered the catechism of well-meaning old ladies, and flirted heartily and openly with giggling 'flappers.'

To the visitors, however, Austin Selwyn paid no heed. He was enduring the lassitude which follows a fever. He knew that the crisis had come, the hour when he must face fairly the crash and ruin of his work; but he put it off as something to which his brain was unequal. Like slow drifting wisps of cloud, different phrases and incidents floated across his mind, shadows of things that had left a clear imprint upon his senses. With the odd vagrancy of an undirected mind, he found himself recalling a few of Hamlet's lines, and smiled wanly to think how, after all those years, the immortal Shakespeare could still give words to his own thoughts: 'This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, . . . this brave overhanging firmament—this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.'

The wings of memory bore him back to Harvard, where once in a scene from Hamlet he had mouthed those very words, little dreaming that in a few short years he would lose the sense of euphony in the cruel realisation of their meaning.

Then, before he saw her or heard her step, he knew that SHE had come. His heart quickened, and his breathing was tremulous with mingled emotions.

'Well,' she said, coming to his bedside and offering her hand, 'how is the invalid?'

'Elise,' he said, 'it is wonderful of you to come.' He looked at her khaki uniform, at the driver's cap which imprisoned her hair. 'Now,' he went on dreamily, 'it all comes back to me. It was you who brought me here.'

'Had you forgotten that already?' she said, bringing a chair to the bedside.

'I couldn't remember,' he answered weakly. 'All I know is that I was walking alone—and there came a blank. When I woke up I was here with a head that didn't feel quite like my own. But I knew, somehow, that you had been with me.'

'What does the doctor say about your wound?'

'It is not serious.'

'You have heard since what happened?'

'Yes.'

'It was absolutely topping the way you fought for that child's life.'

He made a deprecatory gesture, and for a moment conversation ceased. He was wondering at her voice. A subtle change had come over it. Her words were just as uncomfortably rapid as in the first days of their friendship, but there was a hidden quality caught by his ear which he could not analyse. Looking at her with eyes that had waited so long for her coming, he felt once more the affinity she held with things of nature. Her presence obliterated everything else. They were alone—the two of them. The hospital, London, the world, were dimmed to a distant background.

'After such a night,' he said, 'it is very kind of you to make this effort.'

'Not at all. We're cousins, you know.'

'I—I don't'——

'The Americans and the English, I mean. Relatives always go to each others' funerals, so I thought I might stretch a point and take in the hospital.'

'Oh! That was all?'

'Goodness, no! You automatically became a protégé of mine when I picked you up last night. Isn't that a horrid expression?—but frightfully fashionable these unmoral days.'

'You must excuse me,' he said slowly, 'but I was foolish enough to think you came here because—well, because you wanted to.'

'So I did. An air-raid casualty is ever so much more romantic than a wounded soldier. If he lives through it, he always proposes the very next day either to the nurse or to the ambulance-driver, whereas a Tommy, after his third wound, becomes so blasé.'

'You shouldn't torture me,' he said, wincing noticeably under the incision of her words.

Just for a fleeting instant her eyes were softened with a tender look of self-reproach. His heart warmed at the sight, but before he could convince himself that it was not a creation of his own fancy, it had passed, and once more she was holding him at bay with her impersonal abruptness.

'Will you tell me about yourself?' he urged. 'Please.'

'What do you want to know?'

'Everything—everything!' he blurted out, impetuously leaning forward. 'My heavens! Don't you know how I've longed and waited for this moment ever since that night at your flat? I want to hear all about you—what you've done, where you've been, and—and in what mysterious way you've changed.'

'Have I changed?'

'Of course you have. You're trying to appear just as you were when we first met, but you can't do it. Even if I hadn't noticed the difference in you, I should have known that no one could live through these times and remain the same.'

'Why not? Haven't you?'

He laughed grimly, and his head sank back on the pillows. 'I want to know all about you, Elise,' he repeated dully.

'Very well.' She smoothed her skirt with her hands, and folded them
Quakeress-fashion.

'As you know, I once had a flat in Park Walk—which I shared with various and variegated female patriots, also engaged in guiding the destinies of motor-cars. Edna was the first one to follow Marian, after she and I quarrelled; but Edna couldn't break herself of the habit of wandering into the Ritz for luncheon every second day with only a shilling in her pocket.'

'But I don't see how'——

'You poor innocent! Some one always paid—don't worry. So we parted company on that issue, and I asked Mabel to take Edna's place. Mabel was frightfully nice, but took to opium cigarettes, and then to heroin. She disappeared one night, and never came back. Poor girl! Her going made room for Lily, who read the very nicest modern novels, and always cried through the love scenes. I wish you could have seen her sitting up in bed reading a book, eating chocolates, and sobbing like a crocodile. Lily had only one weakness—marrying Flying Corps officers. It was really the army's fault giving two of her husbands leave at the same time.'

Selwyn frowned, 'What a dreadful experience!' he said.

'Oh, I don't know.' She gave a little shrug of her shoulders, but the spirit of badinage had vanished both from her face and from her voice. 'It didn't take long to lose most of one's illusions. It is one thing to meet people as Lord Durwent's daughter, and quite another as a free-lance ambulance-driver. I've seen what people really are since I've been on my own, and I'm sick of the whole thing.'

'You don't mean that, Elise?'

'I do. Men are rotten, and women are cats.'

He smiled quizzically, but she kept her eyes averted from his. It almost appeared as if she were determined to retain her pose of callousness at any effort, but his sense of psychology told him that his first conjecture was correct. The girl who had endured was trying to hide herself behind the personality of her old self.

'My dear girl,' he said slowly, 'it is an old trick of women to talk for the purpose of convincing themselves. I don't care what you have seen—you could not have passed through the ordeal of these long months and believe in your innermost soul that either men or women are rotten. In many ways I feel as if what little knowledge I possess dates from last night; and I have learned things about men right here in this ward to-day that have made me humble. These chaps that we call ignorant, the lower classes—why, they are superb, wonderful. I tell you they have greatness in them. I wish you could have seen them'——

'Haven't I seen them,' she cried, with a little catch in her throat, 'hundreds and hundreds of times? Almost every day, and at all hours of the night, I've gone to meet the Red Cross trains. I have seen men die while being lifted out of the ambulance—men who would try to smile their thanks to us just before the end came. I have'—— She caught her hands in a tight grip, and her eyes welled with tears. 'But they're just jingoes, I suppose,' she said, blending a scornfulness with her repressed grief.

'I have deserved this,' said Selwyn, his face drawn. 'Nothing that you can say is half so bitter as my thoughts.'

'I didn't mean to hurt you,' she said.

'If ever a man was sincere, I was, Elise. Since I left you at Roselawn I have followed the one path, thinking there was a great light ahead. Now I am afraid that, perhaps, it was only a mirage.'

'No, it wasn't,' she replied vehemently. 'I hated you for thinking English women would not aid their men to fight, and I wanted never to see you again. But do you remember when I said that the glory of war was in women's blood? There was a certain amount of truth in it at the beginning; for when I first saw the wounded arrive I was madly excited. I wanted to shout and cheer. But as the months have gone on, and I have seen our soldiers maimed and bleeding and suffering, while thousands of their women at home have simply broken loose and lost all sense of decency or self-respect—oh, what's the use?'

'But you mustn't forget the women who have done such great things for the country.'

'I know—but what's it all for? Since this battle of the Somme our casualties have been frightful, and every day means so many of our real men killed, and so many more shirkers and rotters in proportion to carry on the life of England. We've had our women's revolution all right. There are not many of the old barriers left; but what a mess we have made of our freedom! When I think of all that, and then recall what you said about war, I know that you were right, and we were wrong.'

'You are wonderfully brave,' said Selwyn, 'not only for having done so much, but in telling me that.'

'No,' she said, lowering her eyes to the gloves which she held in her hand; 'I have lost all my courage. Every night I feel as if another day of meeting the wounded will kill me. . . . If it could only end! Anything would be better than these awful casualty lists.'

'Elise'—he raised himself on his elbow and leaned towards her—'you prove yourself a woman when you say that; but you're wrong. I can't give my reasons yet, but since last night I have been seeing clearer and clearer that Britain not only must not lose, but must win. I know other men have said it ten thousand times, but only to-day have I begun to see that, in its own strange, unidealistic manner, this Empire is fighting for civilisation.'

'Then'—her eyes were lit with sudden, glistening radiancy—'then you don't think our men have died uselessly?'

'I could not believe in God,' he answered, wondering at the calm certainty of his voice uttering things which would have infuriated him a few hours before, 'if I thought that this war's dead had fallen for nothing.' His hand, which had been raised in gesture, fell limply on the bed. 'Up to yesterday,' he went on slowly, 'I reasoned truth; to-day—I feel truth. I wonder if it is not always so, that higher knowledge begins with the end of reasoning.'

For a couple of minutes neither spoke, and his head was throbbing with anvil-beats. Twice she started to speak, but stopped each time as though distrustful of her own words.

'I am going back to America, Elise.' His dreamy eyes were gazing beyond her into the distance, or he might have noted that the colour in her cheeks fluctuated suddenly and the fingers on her gloves tightened.

'Why?' There was nothing in her voice to indicate anything but casual interest.

'I must go back,' he said, leaning towards her—'back to my own country. You don't understand. . . . There comes a moment when every fibre of a man's being craves for his own people, for the very air that he breathed as a boy. All these wasted months and last night's climax of damnable murder have left me dazed. I am floundering hopelessly—but at home I shall be able to clear my mind of its mists and see this whole thing as it really is.'

A wall of pain pressed against his head, and his face went gray with agony. In an instant she was standing over him arranging his pillows, and soothing his temples with the gentle pressure of her hands.

For the first time in many months he knew the help and compassion of a woman—and the woman was Elise. He was weak from loss of blood, weary from the long travail of the mind, and her presence, with its indefinable fragrance of clover and morning flowers, was as exquisite music to his senses.

'If you only knew,' he murmured, 'how I have longed for this moment. It has been very lonely for me—and I have wanted you so much, Elise. God! I've wanted you until I had to struggle to keep from crying out your name in the very streets. Forgive me talking like this.' He groped for her hand and held it tightly in his. 'I never had any right to tell you what you meant to me—and less now than before—but when I come back'——

'You will never come back.' She laughed with a strange tremulousness, but in her eyes there was something of the scorn she had shown towards him at Roselawn.

'You are wrong,' he said; 'I must'——

'You are an American,' she answered quickly, 'and that comes first with you. Your country has nothing to do with this war, and you are going back to it. You will stay there. I know you will.'

With his old decisive mannerism he sat up, and his eyes flashed with vigour.

'I will come back,' he said firmly. 'Life has separated us—it has not been your fault or mine—but some day, Elise, when I get my grip on things again, I shall come to you, and you will have to listen. We need each other, and nothing on the earth can alter that'——

'Except America!' She laughed again, and withdrew her hand from his.

'Elise!' he cried, reaching towards her, 'listen to me'——

The Cockney patient leaned over with a bag in his hand. ''Ave a gripe?' he said genially.

'No, th'—— began Selwyn.

'Thanks so much,' said Elise, taking the bag and picking a small cluster for the American, afterwards handing the bag back to the Tommy.

''Ave a few yourself, won't yer?' said the warrior.

'May I?'

''Ere,' said the Cockney, with mock brusqueness. 'Tike a bunch.'

Perhaps from the very intensity of their previous talk, the threads snapped, and her quickly uttered sentences, with the accompanying sparkle in her eyes, showed him that he could hope for little more than badinage for the rest of her visit. Almost as if she desired to eradicate the memory of her emotional admission, she gave her vivacity full play. For a few minutes he tried to bring back the close intimacy of their souls, but she fenced him off, and met his heart-hungry glances with the gayest of smiles.

Roselawn, she told him, had been transformed into a convalescent home, and Lord and Lady Durwent were living in one of the wings. Practically all the servants had enlisted or gone into war-work; and even Mathews, the groom, after perjuring himself before a whole regiment of army doctors, had been accepted (with grave official doubts) for military service.

Interspersed with these details she recounted incidents of her London life as an ambulance-driver, and it was all her listener could do to follow the swift irrelevance of her course. Only once did she pause when, in answer to his question, she told him she had heard nothing of Dick.

IV.

A few minutes later she rose to go.

'I have stayed much too long,' she said. 'I do hope you'll get better quickly.'

He took her hand in his, but made no attempt to translate the meaning of the moment into language. He had worked against her country; while she plied her rounds of mercy, he had written on the debasement and the fallacy of it all. Lying in the wreck of his idealism, in the grip of physical pain, dreading the torture of his own thoughts, could he express what her coming had meant? He wanted to tell her of his heart-hunger, of his loneliness, his gratitude, understanding, reverence, and, above all, of his love. There was so much that it made him silent.

'Good-bye, Elise,' he said.

'Good-bye,' she answered.

That was the end. Of such paltry substance are words.

'By Gar!' said the French-Canadian, looking after her as she disappeared down the ward, 'she mak me tink of my leetle girl Marie; only Marie, mebbe, is only so high, comme ça, and got de black hair, so! I am homeseek. Yes. It mak me verra homeseek. Godam!'

V.

She did not come again. Every morning his heart quickened with hope, and each afternoon grew heavy with discouragement as the hours passed by without the step he listened for. The arrival of the mail was an instant of mad expectancy and mute resignation. But every day carried its cargo of renewed hope, and he grudged the very hours of sleep that separated him from it.

He wrote to her three times—pleaded with her to come again. He begged forgiveness for omitted or committed things which might have hurt her, but no reply came. He thought of writing to Roselawn, fancying she might have gone there, but he was certain that before the letter could reach her she would have come again, and they would only laugh at the idea of any misunderstanding.

He blamed himself for a hundred imaginary crimes. He had not asked her if she would return. Perhaps he had carelessly uttered words that wounded her. He knew her pride; knew that after their parting at the flat it must have been hard for her to make the first move towards reconciliation—and she might have mistaken his joy for petty personal triumph.

Or—had he been an utter fool? Was this her punishment of him? With the consummate artistry of her sex, had she simulated sympathy and forbearance to make his torture all the more exquisite? He dismissed the suggestion as something vile, but, feeding on his doubts and longings, it grew stronger and more insistent with every hour's passing. A hundred times a day he closed his eyes and lived the sweet memory of her visit; but with the gathering arraignments of his doubts, he wondered if it had all been the studied act of the English girl's reprisal on the American who had dared to challenge her nation.

Weary, weary hours—the inactivity of the body lending fuel to the flames of his mind. He determined to dismiss her from his thoughts, and with his power of mental discipline he reduced his mood to one of mute resignation.

Then the thought of America came to him, and he was seized with an impetuous craving for his own country, his own land, where men's natures were broad and mountainous, like America itself. He pictured New York towering into the skies, the charming homes of Boston, where so many happy hours had been spent in genial, cultured controversy. He smelt the ozone of the West, where sandy plains melted into the horizon; where men lived in the open, and a man was your friend for no better reason than that he was following the same trail as yourself.

America. . . . He was impatient now of every day that kept him in England. He felt that his emotions, his brain, his convictions would all be rudderless until he breathed once more the air of the New World, with its vassal oceans bringing tribute to both Eastern and Western coasts.

He would not call himself a failure or a success until he looked on his handiwork in the light of the great Republic. As his ancestors leaving the shores of Holland and Ireland, as millions of men and women had done with the Old World dwindling away in the distance, he looked towards America for the answer to existence.

Ten days after his admission he was allowed to leave the hospital for his rooms in St. James's Square.

He took his leave of the little group who had been his companions for the time—the little Cockney with his incessant exuberance; the French-Canadian, picturesque of language and imagination; the one remaining Australian, vigorous of thought and forceful of temperament; the nurse, carrying Florence Nightingale's lamp through the blackness of war. He tried to say a little of what was bursting for utterance, but they only laughed and fenced it off. They wished him 'Cheerio—good-bye—good luck;' and he wondered if the whole realm of lived or written drama held any farewell more sublimely expressive of a great people enduring to the uttermost.

His servant had a taxi-cab waiting for him. Driving first to a florist's, he purchased roses for the nurse; then, stopping at a tobacconist's, he left a generous order for all the occupants of the ward. After that he went directly to the American Consul's office and made arrangements for his return to New York.

VI.

It was late in December when, driving to Waterloo to catch the boat-train to Southampton, Selwyn was held up in the Strand by the crush of people welcoming the arrival of Red Cross trains from the front.

Leaning out of the window, he watched the motor-cars and ambulances coming out from the station courtyard, while London's people, as they had done from the beginning, welcomed the unknown wounded with waving handkerchiefs and flowers, with hearts that wept and faces that bravely smiled.

With a suppressed cry, Selwyn opened the door and leaped into the crowd. He had seen her driving one of the ambulances, and he fought his way furiously through the human mass to the open roadway. But it was useless. The ambulance had disappeared.

Struggling back to the taxi, he re-entered it, and turning round, made for Waterloo Bridge by way of the Embankment.