"This is number forty-eight, sir," said the soldier, pausing before a mound that May Margaret knew already by heart. "May I look at the photograph, sir? Yes. You see, that's the rosary—that black thing—round the cross."
"The rosary! I don't understand." May Margaret looked at the string of beads on the cross that bore the name of Brian Davidson.
"I suppose he was a Roman Catholic, sir. They must have taken it from the body."
"No, he was not a Catholic," whispered May Margaret. She felt as if she must drop on her knees and call on the mute earth to speak, to explain, to tell her who lay beneath.
"There must be a mistake," she said at last, and her own voice rang in her ears like the voice of a stranger. "I must find out. How can I find out?"
Her face was bloodless as she confronted Captain Crump.
"There's some terrible mistake," she said again. "I can't face his people at home till I find out. He may be—" But that awful word of hope died on her lips.
"I'll do my best," said Captain Crump. "It's very odd, certainly; but I shouldn't—er—hope for too much. You see, if he were living, they wouldn't have been likely to overlook it. It's possible that he may be there, or there." He pointed to two graves without a name. "Or again, he may be missing, of course, or a prisoner. His lot are down at Arras now. We'll get into touch with them to-morrow and I'll make inquiries. You want to pass a night in the trenches, don't you? I think it can be arranged for you to go to that section to-morrow night. Then we can kill two birds with one stone."
May Margaret thanked him. Behind them, she heard, with that strange sense of double meanings which the most commonplace accidents of life can awake at certain moments—the voice of one of the correspondents, still arguing with the others. "Here, if you like, is Shakespeare," he said:
"How should I your true love know
From another one."