She was calling with all her strength now, but the beat of the engine drowned her voice.
"Jack! Please, Jack!"
She hurried down the stone steps at the end of the terrace and ran a few paces along the drive, repeating his name with a sob and stretching out her arms to the vanishing pin-point of red light.
George was still standing in the door-way when she returned at a limp. For a moment she was afraid to speak lest she began to cry.
"I've got a stone in my shoe," she announced at length.
He smiled and offered her his arm.
"You're looking tired, Barbara. Have you had any supper?"
Only the kind and well-intentioned could ask innocent questions which hurt like the thrust of a needle under a finger-nail. At one time it seemed as though she would never escape from the banqueting-hall.
"I've had supper, thanks," she answered, resting one hand on his shoulder, as she felt for the stone in her shoe. Then she remembered a similar act and attitude, when she and Jack stood breathless at the end of the Croxton village street on the night of their first meeting; and she limped to a chair. "It's dreadful to see all those boys going off. I feel that some of them will never come back."
"But we aren't even at war yet," George protested.