He was not listening.
“Serena,” he said feebly. “The world is not my world any longer. I am a stranger and a sojourner in it. All my landmarks are swept away. I wish I could be swept away, too.”
Serena took his cold hands in hers, and held them to her breast.
“Father,” she said, “unless you and countless others, all the best men of your time had given your lives for your country, we should have no country to-day. You bled for us, you kept it for us, for your son, and your son’s son: and we all honour and thank you for what you have done for us.”
John Damer’s eyes looked full at her in a great humility.
“I see now,” he said, in his thin quavering voice, “that I only died for my country. I did not live for her. I took things more or less as I found them. I was blind, blind, blind.”
She would fain have lied to him, but her voice failed her.
He looked piercingly at her.
“Did the others—all those who never fought—there were so many who did not fight—and those who fought and came back—did they live for her, did they try to make a different England, to make her free and happy—after the war?”