That letter lay now on her bosom, just inside the folds of her blouse, where her hand could rest upon it at any moment. How passionately she had hoped for another, a fragment perhaps torn from his notebook in the trenches, and sent back by some messenger at the last moment! She had heard of that happening to so many others. Why not to her!--oh, why not to her? Her heart was dry with longing and grief; her eyes were red for want of sleep. There were strange numb moments when she felt nothing, and could hardly remember why she was in London. And then would come the sudden smart of reviving consciousness--the terrible returns of an anguish, under which her whole being trembled. And always, at the back of everything, the dull thought--'I always knew it--I knew he would die!'--recurring again and again; only to be dashed away by a protest no less persistent--'No, no! He is _not dead!--not dead!_ In a fortnight--she said so--there'll be news--they'll have found him. Then he'll be recovering--and prisoners are allowed to write. Oh, my George!--my George!' It was with a leap of ecstasy that yet was pain, that she imagined to herself the coming of the first word from him. Prisoners' letters came regularly--no doubt of that. Why, the landlady at the hotel had a son who was at Ruhleben, and she heard once a month. Nelly pictured the moment when the letter would be in her hand, and she would be looking at it. Oh, no doubt it wouldn't be addressed by him! By the nurse perhaps--a German nurse--or another patient. He mightn't be well enough. All the same, the dream filled her eyes with tears, that for a moment eased the burning within. Her life was now made up of such moments and dreams. On the whole, what held her most was the fierce refusal to think of him as dead. That morning, in dressing, among the clothes they had hurriedly brought with them from Westmorland, she saw a thin black dress--a useful stand-by in the grime of London--and lifted her hands to take it from the peg on which it hung. Only to recoil from it with horror. _That_--never! And she had dressed herself with care in a coat and skirt of rough blue tweed that George had always liked; scrupulously putting on her little ornaments, and taking pains with her hair. And at every step of the process, she seemed to be repelling some attacking force; holding a door with all her feeble strength against some horror that threatened to come in.