'No--no, don't! Certainly not! Of course I shall go. Accept immediately. They're quite right, it is perfectly true we can go to my mother any other day. Besides, I don't think it's quite fair to old friends like the Mitchells to throw them over when they particularly want us and ask us as a special favour to them, like this.' 'You don't think, perhaps, that somebody else has disappointed them, and they asked us at the last minute, to fill up?' suggested Edith, to whom this was perfectly obvious. Bruce was furious at this suggestion. 'Certainly not!' he exclaimed. 'The idea of such a thing. As if they would treat me like that! Decidedly we will go.' 'All right,' she said, 'just as you wish. But your mother will be disappointed.' Bruce insisted. Of course the invitation was accepted, and once again he was happy! * * * * * And at last Edith was able to be alone, and to think over her meeting with Aylmer. A dramatic meeting under romantic circumstances between two people of the Anglo-Saxon race always appears to fall a little flat; words are difficult to find. When she went in, to find him looking thin and weak, pale under his sunburn, changed and worn, she was deeply thrilled and touched. It brought close to her the simple, heroic manner in which so many men are calmly risking their lives, taking it as a matter of course, and as she knew for a fact that he was forty-two and had gone into the New Army at the very beginning of the war, she was aware he must have strained a point in order to join. She admired him for it. He greeted her with that bright expression in his eyes and with the smile that she had always liked so much, which lighted up like a ray of sunshine the lean, brown, somewhat hard, face. She sat down by his side, and all she could think of to say was: 'Well, Aylmer?' He answered: 'Well, Edith! Here you are.' He took her hand, and she left it in his. Then they sat in silence, occasionally broken by an obvious remark. * * * * * When he had left three years ago both had parted in love, and Aylmer in anger. He had meant never to see her again, never to forgive her for her refusal to use Bruce's escapade as a means of freeing herself, to marry him. Yet now, when they met they spoke the merest commonplaces. And afterwards neither of them could ever remember what had passed between them during the visit. She knew it was short, and that it had left an impression that calmed her. Somehow she had thought of him so much that when she actually saw him again her affection seemed cooler. Had she worn out the passion by dint of constancy? That must be strange. Unaccountably, touched as she was at his wishing to see her just after he had nearly died, the feeling now seemed to be more like a warm friendship, and less like love.