"Yes."
"Did you ever break down like Val?"
"I was older."
"There were plenty of boys of nineteen, officers and men. Did you ever know such another case so complete, so prolonged?"
"I"ve commanded a firing party."
"For cowardice?"
"For cowardice."
"A worse exhibition than Val"s?"
"Isabel, you are pitiless!"
"Because Val deserves justice not mercy. It"s his due: he died to earn it."
Hyde was silent, not thoroughly understanding her.
"He wasn"t a coward when he died," said Isabel with her sweet half melancholy smile. "He fought under a heavy handicap, and won: he paid his debt, paid it to the last farthing; and now do you grudge him his sleep? "He hates him, that would upon the rack of this tough world stretch him out longer. . . ."" Her beautiful voice dropped to a murmur which was almost lost in the rustling of flames on the hearth and the stir of wind among budded branches in the garden.
The clock struck ten and Lawrence raised his head. "It"s growing late, Isabel. Aren"t you tired?"
"A little. I got up at five to say good-bye to all the animals."
"All the--?"
"My c.o.c.ks and hens and Val"s mare and Dodor and Zou-zou and Rowsley"s old rabbits. They"re at the Castle, don"t you remember? Jack Bendish offered to take charge of them when we turned out of the vicarage."
"I hope you put your pinafore on," said her husband.
He took her by the hands and raised her to her feet, and Isabel with irreproachable docility began to collect her scattered belongings, her sable scarf and mull and veil. Lawrence forestalled her. "Mayn"t I even carry my own gloves?" Isabel pleaded. "No, you"re so slow," said Lawrence laughing down at her. Isabel"s cheeks flew their scarlet flag before the invading enemy. "Isabel," Lawrence murmured, "are you shy of me?"
"A little. I"m only twenty," Isabel excused herself.
"And I"m not gentle. I shall brush the bloom off. . . . Yet I love the bloom."
He went to close the window. A breath of night wind shook through the bushes on the lawn and blew off a snow of petals through the soft air. He was not a believer in the immortality of the soul, but tonight he would have given much to know that Val was near him, a spirit of smiling tenderness. But no: the night was empty of everything except moonlight and petals and the sighing of wind over diapered turf. Youth pa.s.ses, and beauty, and bloom: it is of the essence of their sweetness that they cannot last. Yet, while they last, how sweet they are!