“Then you really think it true—about the ten thousand years, I mean?” “Of course, dear,” he answered, and this time his voice was serious enough. “Did we not tell each other yonder in the Abbey that ours was the love eternal?” “Yes, but words cannot make eternity.” “No, but thoughts and the will behind them can, for we reap what we sow.” “Why do you say that?” she asked quickly. “I can’t tell you, except because I know that it is so. We come to strange conclusions out yonder, where only death seems to be true and all the rest a dream. What we call the real and the unreal get mixed.” A kind of wave of happiness passed through her, so obvious that it was visible to the watching Godfrey. “If you believe it I dare say that it is so, for you always had what they call vision, had you not?” Then without waiting for an answer, she went on, “What nonsense we are talking. Don’t you understand, Godfrey, that I am quite old?” “Yes,” he answered, “getting on; six months younger than I am, I think.” “Oh! it’s different with a man. Another dozen years and I’m finished.” “Possibly, except for that eternity before you.” “Also,” she continued, “I am even——” “Even more beautiful than you were ten years ago, at any rate to me,” he broke in. “You foolish Godfrey,” she murmured, and moved a little away from him. Just then the door opened, and Mrs. Parsons, looking very odd in a nurse’s dress with the cap awry upon her grey hair, entered, carrying a bit of paper. “The hunt I had!” she began; “that silly, new-fangled kind of a girl-clerk having stuck the paper away under the letter O—for officers, you know, Miss—in some fancy box of hers, and then gone off to tea. Here are the names, but I can’t see without my specs.” At this point something in the attitude of the two struck her, something that her instincts told her was uncommon, and she stood irresolute. Isobel stepped to her as though to take the list, and, bending down, whispered into her ear. “What?” said Mrs. Parsons. “Surely I didn’t understand; you know I’m getting deaf as well as blind. Say the name again.” Isobel obeyed, still in a whisper. “_Him_!” exclaimed the old woman, “him! Our Godfrey, and you’ve been and let on who you were—you who call yourself a nursing Commandant? Why, I dare say you’ll be the death of him. Out you go, Miss, anyway; I’ll take charge of this case for the present,” and as it seemed to Godfrey, watching from the far corner, literally she bundled Isobel from the room. Then she shut and locked the door. Coming to the bedside she knelt down rather stiffly, looked at him for a while to make sure, and kissed him, not once, but many times.