"You may leave immediately, Miss Waring," he said sternly as they reached No. 7; "and I will make my own arrangements about your work."
Stella fled. Again he felt the sense of wings, as if he had opened a window, and a bird had flown past him into liberty.
He did not want her to be grateful, but he thought she might have looked back. She had noticed him only as a barrier unexpectedly fallen. She had not seen how strange it was that a barrier of so stubborn and erect a nature as Mr. Travers should have consented to fall.
If any one else had asked him for an afternoon with a friend in trouble, Mr. Travers knew that he would have said, "Your friends' troubles must take place outside office-hours." But when he had seen Stella's face he had forgotten office-hours.
Marian was sitting on a chair in the corridor. Her expression implied that there was no such thing as a town hall, and that the chair was a mere concession to unnecessary space. She said, as she saw Stella:
"Please be quick about putting your things on. Yes, it's bad news about Julian."
Stella was quick. Marian said no more until they were seated together in the motor; then she gave Stella a letter she had received from Lady Verny. Lady Verny wrote:
My dear Marian: You must prepare yourself for a great distress. Julian is in England, but he is very much injured. I want you to go to him at once. Whenever he is conscious he asks for you. My dear, if he recovers,—and they think that if he has an incentive to live he will live,—he will be partially paralyzed. I know that he will want to free you, and it will be right that you should even now feel free; but till then—for a month—will you give him all you can? All he needs to live? It is a great deal to ask of you, but I think you are good and kind, and that I shall not ask this of you in vain. His life is valuable, and will still be so, for his brain is not affected. Before he relapsed into unconsciousness he was able to give the Government the information he acquired. I think it is not wrong to help him to live; but of course I am his mother, and it is difficult for me to judge. All this is very terrible for you, even the deciding of whether you ought to help him to live or not. If I might suggest anything to you, it would be to talk about it with that friend of yours, Miss Waring.
Come to me when you have seen him. Do not think, whatever your decision is, that I shall not realize what it costs you, or fail to do all in my power to help you to carry it out.
Yours affectionately,
Helen Verny.
Stella dropped the letter and looked at Marian. Marian sat erect, and her eyes burned. She was tearless and outraged by sorrow. There are people who take joy as a personal virtue and sorrow as a personal insult, and Marian was one of these people. Happiness had softened and uplifted her; pain struck her down and humiliated her solid sense of pride.
"Why wasn't he killed?" she asked bitterly, meeting Stella's questioning eyes. "I could have borne his being killed. Value! What does Lady Verny mean by value? His career is smashed; his life is to all intents and purposes over. And mine with it! It is very kind of her to say he will release me. I do not need his mother to tell me that. She seems to have overlooked the fact that I have given him my word! Is it likely that I should fail him or that I could consent to be released? I do not need any one to tell me my duty. But I hate life! I hate it! I think it all stupid, vile, senseless! Why did I ever meet him? What good has love been to me? A few hours' happiness, and then this martyrdom set like a trap to catch us! And I don't like invalids. I have never seen any one very ill. I sha'n't know what to say to him."