"Rachel," he said low, to the woman in the bed beneath him.
"Jocko," came the answering voice, quiet as his own.
"We're going in."
"Thank God."
In the darkness she reached up arms, white and trembling as a bride's, and drew him to her.
He kissed her eyelids and found them wet.
"I can't help it, Jocko," she sobbed. "Jock!"
Her boy was in India with the second battalion; but she knew very well that now the crash had come every battalion in the Service would be flung into the furnace.
The Colonel went back to the window and she came to his side. His arm crept about her, and she trembled in the curve of it. A mild but ghastly beam, as of the moon, fell on them standing at the window. A battleship was playing its searchlight full on them. The cold wan beam roamed along the hill-side callous and impersonal, exposing every bush and scar. It fell on the white bluff of Beau-nez and came creeping, like the fingers of a leper, along the cliff. Just opposite the hostel, at the spot where the path ran down to the beach, it stayed, pointing as it were, at a little pillar of solid blackness erect on the cliff edge.
The Colonel caught his breath with a gasp.