"He has not come back. But I am not afraid. I promised him I would never be afraid again."
In dark and tired hours he steadied himself with a singular half-realised belief that she would not—that somehow some strange thing would be left to her, whatsoever was taken away. It was because he felt as if he were nearing the end of his tether. He had become hypersensitive to noises, to the sounds in the streets, to the strain and grief in faces he saw as he walked or drove.
After lying awake all one night without a moment of blank peace he came down pale and saw that his hand shook as he held his coffee cup. It was a livid sort of morning and when he went out for the sake of exercise he found he was looking at each of the strained faces as if it held some answer to an unformed question. He realised that the tenseness of both mind and body had increased. For no reason whatever he was restrung by a sense of waiting for something—as if something were going to happen.
He went back to Coombe House and when he crossed the threshold he confronted the elderly unliveried man who had stood at his place for years—and the usually unperturbed face was agitated so nearly to panic that he stopped and addressed him.
"Has anything happened?"
"My lord—a Red Cross nurse—has brought"—he was actually quite unsteady—too unsteady to finish, for the next moment the Red Cross nurse was at his side—looking very whitely fresh and clean and with a nice, serious youngish face.
"I need not prepare you for good news—even if it is a sort of shock," she said, watching him closely. "I have brought Captain Muir back to you."
"You have brought—?" he exclaimed.
"He has been in one of the worst German prisons. He was left for dead on the field and taken prisoner. We must not ask him questions. I don't know why he is alive. He escaped, God knows how. At this time he does not know himself. I saw him on the boat. He asked me to take charge of him," she spoke very quickly. "He is a skeleton, poor boy. Come."