Many a mother, wife, sister, kept among the most precious of her treasures letters signed "Hew Lingard"--letters speaking in high terms of a dead son, of a dead husband, of a dead brother. But those men and lads on whose dead faces he had gazed had died the death which to Lingard and his like puts the crown on a soldier's life. He had lost comrades who had been dear to him and whose loss he had lamented sorely. But never, never had the sudden cancelling, so to speak, of a human being brought with it this sense of chilling horror, of nothingness where so much had been. And then there was something else--something which at once revolted and distressed him inexpressibly. The immediate past, the events of the last four weeks, became, in so far as they concerned the woman who was now lying dead, both fantastic and shameful. Last night, for the first time, something of Athena's ruthless egotism had forced itself upon Lingard's perception. Hitherto he had been too deeply concerned with his own egotism, his own cruelty, his own remorse, to give thought to hers. That she should have used Jane Oglander as her ambassador to Richard Maule had shocked, nay more, had disgusted him, as soon as he had found himself away from the magic of her presence. Wholly absorbed in the future, Athena, after her first words of eager gratitude for Jane's intervention, had dismissed Jane from her mind, expelled her from her mental vision. Nay, she had gone further, for in answer to a muttered word from Lingard, she had at last said something which had jarred his taste, as well as roused that instinctive dog-in-the-manger attitude which slumbers in all men with regard to any woman who has been beloved. "Jane," Athena had said impatiently, "will end by marrying Dick Wantele. But for me she would have done it long ago!" And angrily the listener's heart, his memory, had given Athena the lie. After Mrs. Maule had left him the night before, Lingard had gone out of doors, and now chance brought him to the spot where he had stood for a long time staring at the long low house which now sheltered Jane Oglander, driven there, as he knew well, by his base, it now seemed his inconceivable, cruelty. How clearly he had visualised her last night! Imagining her as widely awake as he was himself, but denied by a thousand scruples from the relief of being able to go out, alone, into the darkness and solitude. If they had met there last night, he might at least have told Jane of his fight--of his losing fight for his lost honour. Now she would always believe that he had surrendered without a struggle. He walked on and into the curious, formal little garden of the Small Farm, even now gay with late autumn blossoms. The beams of a wintry sun lay athwart the picturesque old house.