Recklow went back to his telephone. For a long while he remained there very busy with Belfort and Verdun. When again he returned to the green door in his garden wall, the Yankee infantry had passed; and of their passing there remained no trace save for the smouldering pillar of fire towering now higher than the eastern horizon and leagthened to a wall that ran away into the north as far as the eye could see.
His cats had come out into the garden for "the cats' hour"—that mysterious compromise between day and evening when all things feline awake and stretch and wander or sit motionless, alert, listening to occult things. And in the enchantment of that lovely liaison which links day and night—when the gold and rose soften to mauve as the first star is born—John Recklow raised his quiet eyes and saw two dead souls come into his garden by the little door in the wall.
"Is it you, Kay McKay?" he said at last.
But the shock of the encounter still fettered him so that he walked very slowly to the woman who was now moving toward him across the grass.
"Evelyn Erith," he said, taking her thin hands in his own, which were trembling now.
"It's a year," he complained unsteadily.
"More than a year," said McKay in his dead voice.
With his left hand, then, John Recklow took McKay's gaunt hand, and stood so, mute, looking at him and at the girl beside him.
"God!" he said blankly. Then, with no emphasis: "It's rather more than a year!… They sent me two fire-charred skulls—the head of a man and the head of a woman…. That was a year ago…. After your pigeon arrived… I found the scorched skulls wrapped in a Swiss newspaper-lying inside the garden wall—over there on the grass!… And the swine had written your names on the skulls…."
Into Evelyn Erith's eyes there came a vague light—the spectre of a smile. And as Recklow looked at her he remembered the living glory she had once been; and wrath blazed wildly within him. "What have they done to you?" he asked in an unsteady voice. But McKay laid his hand on Recklow's arm: