The Dowager Duchess of Darte was often absent from Eaton Square. She was understood to be proving herself much stronger than her friends had supposed her to be. She proved it by doing an extraordinary amount of work. She did it in her house in Eaton Square--in other people's houses, in her various estates in the country, where she prepared her villagers and tenants for a future in which every farm house and cottage must be as ready for practical service as her own castle or manor house. Darte Norham was no longer a luxurious place of residence but a potential hospital for wounded soldiers; so was Barons Court and the beautiful old Dower House at Malworth. Sometimes Robin was with her, but oftener she remained at Eaton Square and wrote letters and saw busy people and carried out lists of orders. It was not every day or evening that she could easily find time to go out alone and make her way to the Square Gardens and in fact it was not often to the Gardens she went. There were so many dear places where trees grew and made quiet retreats--all the parks and heaths and green suburbs--and everywhere pairs walked or sat and talked, and were frankly so wholly absorbed in the throb of their own existences that they had no interest in, or curiosity concerning, any other human beings. "Ought I to ask you to come and meet me--as if you were a little housemaid meeting her life-guardsman?" Donal had said feverishly the second time they met. A sweet flush ran up to the roots of her hair and even showed itself on the bit of round throat where her dress was open. "Yes, you ought," she answered. "There are no little housemaids and life-guardsmen now. It seems as if there were only--people." The very sound of her voice thrilled him--everything about her thrilled him--the very stuff her plain frock was made of, the small hat she wore, her way of moving or quiet sitting down near him, but most of all the lift of her eyes to his--because there was no change in it and the eyes expressed what they had expressed when they had first looked at him. It was a thing which moved him to-day exactly as it had moved him when he was too young to explain its meaning and appeal. It was the lovely faith and yearning acceptance of him as a being whose perfection could not be questioned. There was in it no conscious beguiling flattery or appraisement--it was pure acceptance and sweet waiting for what he had to give. He sometimes found himself trembling with his sense of its simple unearthliness. Few indeed were the people who at this time were wholly normal. The whole world seemed a great musical instrument, overstrung and giving out previously unknown harmonies and inharmonies. Amid the thunders of great crashing discords the individual note was almost unheard--but the individual note continued its vibrations.