And there, for five days and nights, with the briefest possible intervals for food, and the sleep of exhaustion, she sat beside him. She was dimly conscious of the people about her, of the boundless tenderness and skill that was poured out upon the poor sufferer at her side; she did everything for George that the nurses could shew her how to do--; it was the one grain of personal desire left in her, and doctors and nurses developed the most ingenious pity in devising things for her to do, and in letting every remedy that soothed his pain, or cleared his mind, go, as far as possible, through her hands. And there were moments when she would walk blindly along the sea beach with Cicely, finding a stimulus to endure in the sharpness of the winter wind, or looking in vague wonder at the great distant camp, with its streets of hospitals, its long lines of huts, its training-grounds, and the bodies of men at work upon them. Here, the war came home to her, as a vast machine by which George, like millions of others, had been caught and crushed. She shuddered to think of it. At intervals Sarratt still spoke a good deal, though rarely after their third day together. He asked her once--'Dear, did you ever send for my letter?' She paused a moment to think. 'You mean the letter you left for me--in case?' He made a sign of assent, and then smiled into the face bending over him. 'Read it again, darling. I mean it all now, as I did then.' She could only kiss him softly--without tears. After the first day she never cried. On the last night of his life, when she thought that all speech was over, and that she would never hear his voice, or see a conscious look, again, he opened his eyes suddenly, and she heard--'I love you, sweetheart! I love you, sweetheart!' twice over. That was the last sound. Towards midnight he died. Next morning Cicely wrote to Farrell:-- 'We are coming home to-morrow after they bury him in the cemetery here. Please get Hester--_whatever she may be doing_--to throw it up, and come and meet us. She is the only person who can help Nelly now for a bit Nelly pines for Rydal--where they were together. She would go to Hester's cottage. Tell Hester. 'Why, old boy, do such things happen? That's what I keep asking--not being a saint, like these dear nurses here, who really have been angelic. I am the only one who rebels. George Sarratt was so patient--so terribly patient! And Nelly is just crushed--for the moment, though I sometimes expect to see a strange energy in her before long. But I keep knocking my head all day, and part of the night--the very small part that I'm not asleep--against the questions that everybody seems to have asked since the world began--and I know that I am a fool, and go on doing it. 'George Sarratt, I think, was a simple Christian, and died like one. He seemed to like the Chaplain, which was a comfort. How much any of that means to Nelly I don't know.' She also wrote to Marsworth:--