Campbell quite understood. He was only too glad of this reinstallation of a person on whom he could rely; eager as he was to devote most of his own time to his labours on the Commissariat. Alexander was dead; and Guy Burnett not yet well enough to take up the partnership.... Gareth's departure from the firm had been a definite nuisance. "He's no' indeespensable," reflected Campbell, "but time meks of a man a vary useful habit!"
Gareth walked slowly down the Strand, haunted by a queer echo of his own voice as it had recently spoken, only transposed to a higher shriller key. "The strain of the war ... my nerves are out of order ... and then my husband off to-night for the Front." So might a woman have offered excuse for an outburst of hysteria. So might a woman be placed, with the man she loved on the eve of departure. So might a woman feel about the war, as he had been feeling all the while ... his vague half-splendid, half-pitiful dreams; his stifled longing to have the right, right of sex, maybe—to play the passive sacrificial part unquestioned and unashamed....
He butted full into a figure standing stock-still, engrossed in the open flapping sheets of an evening paper. At the force of the impact she turned—and he broke off his apologies.
"Kathleen!"
She showed no surprise at the encounter. And indeed, it was curious that this should be their first accidental meeting since she had bidden him a curt good-bye in the dining-room of Pacific Villa.
"Have you seen this?" she asked directly, pointing to a column in the paper, that dealt with a brilliant and successful feat on the part of two British airmen in France, in combat with a number of enemy aeroplanes sent up to prevent them from obtaining photographs of a very important section of trench. Both pilot and observer were recommended for the D.S.O.: Lieutenant Frank Morton and Captain Napier Kirby....
Gareth looked at Kathleen; her eyes were soft and shining; her mouth tremulous.
"Only very slightly wounded, they say. But he was always a reckless idiot!" with a half-laugh of tenderness that held a sheer girlish quality. Then suddenly she seemed to realize Gareth, and her face altered to its remembered harshness.
"Why didn't you let me go with him, that time? If you had ... he would be mine now—now that...."
Gareth replied: "Yes, but I was too unhappy; somebody had got in first with the theme of my book."