Berkley's throat closed; he could not speak; nor did he know what he might have said could he have spoken, for within him all had seemed to crash softly into chaos, and he had no mind, no will, no vigour, only a confused understanding of emotion and pain, and a fierce longing. Colonel Arran's sunken eyes never left his, watching, wistful, patient. And at last the boy bent forward and rested his elbows on his knees and dropped his face in both hands. Time ebbed away in silence; there was no sound in the ward save the blue flies' buzz or the slight movement of some wounded man easing his tortured body. "Philip!" The boy lifted his face from his hands. "Can you forgive me?" "Yes, I have. . . . There was only one thing to forgive. I don't count--myself." "I count it--bitterly." "You need not. . . . It was only--my mother----" "I know, my boy. The blade of justice is double-edged. No mortal can wield it safely; only He who forged it. . . . I have never ceased to love--your mother." Berkley's face became ashen. Colonel Arran said: "Is there punishment more terrible than that for any man?" Presently Berkley drew his chair closer. "I wish you to know how mother died," he said simply. "It is your right to know. . . . Because, there will come a time when she and--you will be together again . . . if you believe such things." "I believe." For a while the murmur of Berkley's voice alone broke the silence. Colonel Arran lay with eyes closed, a slight flush on his sunken cheeks; and, before long, Berkley's hand lay over his and remained there. The brilliant, ominous flies whirled overhead or drove headlong against the window-panes, falling on their backs to kick and buzz and scramble over the sill; slippered attendants moved softly along the aisle with medicines; once the ward-master came and looked down at Colonel Arran, touched the skin of his face, his pulse, and walked noiselessly away. Berkley's story had already ended. After a while he said: "If you will get well--whatever I am--we two men have in common a memory that can never die. If there were nothing else--God knows whether there is--that memory is enough, to make us live at peace with one another. . . . I do not entirely understand how it is with me, but I know that some things have been washed out of my heart--leaving little of the bitterness--nothing now of anger. It has all been too sad for such things--a tragedy too deep for the lesser passions to meddle with. . . . Let us forgive each other. . . . She will know it, somehow." Their hands slowly closed together and remained. "Philip!" "Sir?" "Ailsa is here." "Yes, sir." "Will you say to her that I would like to see her?" For a moment Berkley hesitated, then rose quietly and walked into the adjoining ward. Ailsa was bending over a sick man, fanning away the flies that clustered around the edge of the bowl from which he was drinking. And Berkley waited until the patient had finished the broth.