She did not seem to comprehend the words--or even to hear them.
She appeared suddenly to be possessed by a new idea, and, undoing the pearl button of her blouse, she drew forth the letter and held it out.
"Take it. There is no use for me to keep it. I don't want to read it. It is yours."
She opened the door, passed him by, and went, bare-headed, into the drowsy sunshine, and a lark in the clear blue of the sky seemed suddenly to mock her with his wealth of full-throated song. She walked blindly, yet her feet guided her away to the great spaces of the Moor of Creagh, where she could be alone under the clear canopy of heaven and where the messengers of the Unseen were free to comfort her.
Malcolm, still shaky and trembling, looked about with the air of a man who does not know which way to turn. Then he sat him down and braced himself for the effort of reading the letter which had fallen like the crack of doom upon the old man's heart.
It was such a letter as one true friend might write to another, carefully worded so that it would not inflict any unnecessary pain. It was a letter which had cost its writer several sleepless nights--a letter of duty and friendship for a man whom he had never met, but whose name was still honoured in the service that he had adorned.
Had the Colonel known of the old man's state of health that letter would never have been written. But it told the truth--the whole truth, without varnish or embroidery, in the simple language which is all that a soldier has at his command.
Malcolm Mackinnon set his teeth as he read it, and surely in that awful moment he expiated part at least of his many sins.
After what seemed a long, long time he picked himself up heavily, crushed the letter in his hand, and threw it into the fire, where he watched it caught by a greedy flame and consumed to the uttermost edge.
Then he left the room, passed by, unseeing, the doddering Diarmid in the hall, and slowly mounted the narrow stairs.