As I stood holding the sword, my husband came into the room with a newspaper in his hand. He is a man who can hardly ever be seen without a newspaper in his hand. But this time his face showed that something new and grave had happened.
"Gretton is dead," he announced to me. "He was killed by a shell at Festubert five days ago."
I caught my breath sharply as my eyes met his.
"Gretton?" I exclaimed; and my voice sounded thin in my own ears.
"Yes." My husband nodded jerkily. "I don't really like telling you about it, but this comes rather strangely on the top of ugly dreams I've had lately. I dreamt four times last week that I saw Roland and Gretton coming along arm in arm, laughing together, but looking more like upright dead men than living flesh and blood. And the queer thing about it was that, though they were laughing together, Roland was trying to get away from Gretton, and somehow he couldn't. It was as if something that was stronger than their own will kept them close to each other. There was something horrible about it."
I knew that the blood was leaving my cheeks and lips as I looked at him. And yet this boy Gretton was a person whom I had never spoken to in my life!
For the first time for nearly three months, I felt a deadly chill run through me again, just as when Little Yeogh Wough had first gone out to the Front.
"Do you know, I can't help feeling troubled about this?" I heard myself saying in a strange whisper. "It is very silly of me, but I can't help feeling that—that Gretton may be calling to him to follow."
It was not so mad a thing as it seemed, this fear that had just come to me that the boy Gretton, killed five days ago, might be calling to the boy of my heart.