The word "home" swept aside the last barricades of her self-control. She flung herself into his arms weeping wildly and thankfully. * * * * * As the dawn broke, Nora stood at the prow of the vessel that was bearing her homewards, and welcomed the white bulwarks of England as they rose in majestic sovereignty out of the morning mists. Her eyes filled. She could have stretched out her arms in her pride and joy, and the whole world that she had left behind had vanished like some delirious dream. Miles away, in a quiet field on the outskirts of Berlin, two men faced each other at ten paces’ distance, and awaited the signal. It was given, and two puffs of smoke issued from the outstretched weapons, and curled slowly upwards into the frosty air. One of the men reeled and fell, and lay quiet, with his face in the grass. They picked him up tenderly, and as they bore him thence his fading eyes opened. "Do—not frighten her," he whispered. "Don’t let her think that it is anything—serious——" In the same instant, Nora had turned joyously to the man at her side. "Oh, thank God!" she cried. "Thank God, I am home at last!" Thus she returned to her own country and her own people, and a sea rolled between her and all that had been. END OF BOOK II. *BOOK III* *THE BRIDGE* *CHAPTER I* *HOME* Mrs. Ingestre’s bed had been drawn to the window, so that she could look out on to the drear landscape of snow-covered fields and catch the few rays of sunshine that here and there broke through the grey monotony of sky. It was her last stand against the shadow which was soon to blot out the whole world for ever from her eyes. There she had lain day after day, and with her imagination brightened the bleak outlook with the summer sunshine and the green trees which she was to see no more. There she had written cheery, hopeful letters to her daughter and had received cheery, hopeful letters in return. There mother and daughter, clasped in each other’s arms, acknowledged that the letters had been no more than merciful lies, that the hope they had expressed had been disguised despair. "How blind I must have been!" Mrs. Ingestre thought, as Nora, kneeling at her bedside, poured out the story of her short married happiness. "How blind not to have seen and understood!" "How heartless, how self-absorbed I was not to have known!" Nora reproached herself, as she looked into the well-loved face on which death had set his unmistakable seal.