"I've got you," he repeated. "I'm not going to wait any longer----" "It's the only way you'll ever have me," she answered, "by letting me do my duty to Roddy--I promise you that. If ever life is impossible--if it's ever better for both of us that I should go, I'll come to you--But I shall tell him first." "Tell him! But he won't let you go." "He won't stop me--if it comes to that." He pleaded with her then, telling her about his life, its loneliness, his unhappiness, how impossible it would be now without her. But she shook her head. "Don't you think," she cried, "that grandmother would be delighted if we went off? Both of us done for--you never able to return again ... Ah! no! For all of us, for every reason, it's not to be." "I won't let you go--I've got you. I'll keep you." "You can't, Francis----" "I can and I will----" Then looking up, catching a vision of her framed in the window with the lighted city behind her, he saw in her eyes how unattainable she might be.... He had, he had always had, his ideals. There was a long silence between them, then he bowed his head. "You shall do as you will--anything with me that you will." "Oh, my dear," she whispered, "I love you for that." Then hurriedly, moving as though she feared her own weakness, she went to put on her wraps--He came to her. "Let me write--let me." "No--Better not." "Just a line--Nothing that any ordinary person----" "No, we mustn't, Francis." He put her furs about her neck, then his hand rested on her shoulder. Her head fell back. "Once more"--she said. He kissed her throat, then her eyes, then their lips met. "Stay," he whispered, "stay"--Very slowly she drew away from him, smiled at him once, and was gone. CHAPTER VIII CHRISTOPHER'S DAY "I judge more than I used to--but it seems to me that I have earned the right. One can't judge till one is forty; before that we are too eager, too hard, too cruel, and in addition too ignorant." HENRY JAMES. I The War had the City in its grip. There was now, during these early weeks of November, no other thought, no other anxiety, no other interest. The shock of its reality came most severely upon those whose lives had been most unreal. Here, in the midst of their dining and their dancing, was the sure fact that many whom they knew and with whom they had been in the habit of playing might now, at any moment, find death-- Here was a reality against which there was no argument, and against the harshness of it music screamed and food was uninteresting. During that first month of that war, so new a thing was the horrid grimness of it, that hysteria was abroad, life was twopence coloured. For everyone now it was the question--"What might they do?" Something to help, something to ease that biting truth--"Your life has been the most utterly useless business--no purpose, no strength, no unselfishness from first to last--what now?"