"Dear man," she said, "I want you to go; I can't think when you're with me. I've just got to worry this thing out for myself. I don't want you to come and see me, Derek, until I send for you; I don't want you even to write to me. I don't know how long it will take. . . . but I'll let you know, as soon as I know myself."
For a while he argued with her—but it was useless. In the bottom of his heart he knew it would be even as he pleaded and stormed. And, because he recognised what lay behind her decision, he loved her all the more for her refusal. There was a certain sweet wistfulness on her face that tore at his heart, and at last he realised that he was failing her, and failing her badly. It was a monstrous thing from one point of view that such a sacrifice should be possible—but it came to Vane with cynical abruptness that life abounds in monstrous things.
And so, very gently, he kissed her. "It shall be as you say, dear," he said gravely. "But try not to make it too long. . . ."
At the door he stopped and looked back. She was standing as he had left her, staring out into the darkness, and as he paused she turned and looked at him. And her eyes were very bright with unshed tears. . . .
Mechanically he picked up his hat and gloves, and drove back to his rooms. He helped himself to a whisky and soda of such strength that Binks looked at him with an apprehensive eye, and then he laughed.
"Hell, Binks," he remarked savagely—"just Hell!"
CHAPTER XIV
During the weeks that followed Vane did his best to put Joan out of his mind. He had given her his promise not to write, and as far as in him lay he tried his hardest not to think. A Medical Board passed him fit for light duty, and he joined up at the regimental depot in the cathedral city of Murchester. Once before he had been there, on a course, before he went overseas for the first time, and the night he arrived he could not help contrasting the two occasions. On the first he, and everyone else, had had but one thought—the overmastering desire to get across the water. The glamour of the unknown was calling them—the glory which the ignorant associate with war. Shop was discussed openly and without shame. They were just a band of wild enthusiasts, only longing to make good.
And then they had found what war really was—had sampled the reality of the thing. One by one the band had dwindled, and the gaps had been filled by strangers. Vane was sitting that night in the chair where Jimmy Benton had always sat. . . . He remembered Jimmy lying across the road near Dickebush staring up at him with sightless eyes. So had they gone, one after another, and now, how many were left? And the ones that had paid the big price—did they think it had been worth while . . . now? . . . They had been so willing to give their all without counting the cost. With the Englishman's horror of sentimentality or blatant patriotism, they would have regarded with the deepest mistrust anyone who had told them so. But deep down in each man's heart—it was England—his England—that held him, and the glory of it. Did they think their sacrifice had been worth while . . . now? Or did they, as they passed by on the night wind, look down at the seething bitterness in the country they had died for, and whisper sadly, "It was in vain—You are pulling to pieces what we fought to keep standing; you have nothing but envy and strife to put in its place. . . . Have you not found the truth—yet? . . ."
Unconsciously, perhaps, but no less certainly for that, Vane was drifting back into the same mood that had swayed him when he left France. If what Ramage had said to him was the truth; if, at the bottom of all the ceaseless bickering around, there was, indeed, a vital conflict between two fundamentally opposite ideas, on the settlement of which depended the final issue—it seemed to him that nothing could avert the catastrophe sooner or later. It was against human nature for any class to commit suicide—least of all the class which for generations had regarded itself and been regarded as the leading one. And yet, unless this thing did happen; unless voluntarily, the men of property agreed to relinquish their private rights, and sink their own interests for the good of the others, Ramage had quite calmly and straightforwardly prophesied force. Apparently the choice lay between suicide and murder. . . .