Foolish though it seemed, it was this slight episode that had finally decided him that he must speak with her this very night. Too long he had put it off, whispering to himself now one excuse, now another. It had come to him while he had been preparing his speech for the unveiling of the war memorial: How long was he going to play the coward? When was he going to answer the call of his King, his country? When had that call first come to him? What voice--what vision had first spoken to him? He tried to think. There had been no trumpet call. No pillar of light had flashed before his eyes. It had come to him in little whispers of the wind, in little pluckings at his sleeve. Some small wild creature’s cry of pain. The sorrow of a passing face. The story of a wrong done, when or where it did not matter. Always the darkness was full of reproachful eyes accusing him of delay. It seemed to him that he was standing beside God in some vast doorless chamber, listening to the falling of the tears of the world--the tears of all the ages that were past, the tears of the ages yet to come; and God’s sad eyes were watching him. If he could take her with him. If only she would come with him. There had been a moment at the beginning of the war when it might have been: those days of terror when the boy lay wounded unto death; and he had heard her cry out in the night: “Oh, God, take all I have but that.” Had he urged her then? Honours, riches! In that moment she would have known their true value. But the child had lived, and all her desires were now for him. She would resent whatever might make to his detriment. No, he would have to go alone. How was he going to put it into words? How could he hurt her least, while at the same time leaving no opening for false hope? He had purposely avoided thinking it out. It would be useless coming to her with cut and dried phrases. He would not be laying down the law. He would be pleading for forgiveness, for understanding. He could picture the bewilderment that would come into her eyes as slowly his meaning dawned upon her: giving place to anger, despair. It would seem to her that she had never known him, that she had been living with a strange man. Why had he not taken her into his confidence years ago, made her the sharer of his dreams--his visions? How did he know she would not have sympathized with him? It was his love for her that had made him false--or rather his love for himself. He had wanted to come to her always with gifts, so that she might be grateful to him, proud of him. Now it was too late. It would seem to her that all these years he had been living apart, her husband only in body. She would feel herself a woman scorned.