Bel followed more leisurely, flushed a little, but controlled. Then the hovering servants came forward and Helen slipped quietly into her husband’s study.
There, at last, Mark came to her—followed by an apparently tailless Bobs.
Somehow she contrived to smile. Then his arms were round her, crushing her to him.
‘God bless you,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t fret. It’s going to be all right. And—if it isn’t ... it’ll still be all right.’
Then he kissed her again and let her go.
From the threshold he waved to her, smiling resolutely, though tears stood in his eyes. She waved back to him. The door shut between them. He was gone.
As she stood motionless, fighting back her grief, she was startled by that sharp, familiar pang in the region of her heart, and a momentary darkness as if a raven’s wing had brushed across her eyes. She shivered and kneeled hastily down to comfort the desolate Bobs, while her tears fell, unchecked now, upon his rough brown head.
CHAPTER XV.
‘Here is the hard paradox: war ... this devilish, bestial, senseless thing, produces in masses—as peace distinctly does not produce them—brothers and sisters to Christ.’—G. A. B. Dewar.