No wonder he found it hard to forgive me! No wonder that whenever I came where he was he treated me to some kindly hint or correction which was no sufficient veil for his scorn! As I had never to my knowledge been hated by any one, it was terrible to feel myself an object of abhorrence to a man of such high standing in the world. Our eyes couldn't meet without my seeing that his passions were seething to the boiling-point. If he could have struck me dead with a look I think he would have done it. And I didn't hate him; I was too sorry for him. I could have liked him if he had let me. I had, consequently, much to think about. I thought and I prayed. It was not a minute at which to do anything hurriedly. To a spirit so hot as mine it would have been a relief to lash out at them all; but, as I had checked myself hitherto, I checked myself again. I reasoned that if I kept close to right, right would take care of me. Not being a theologian, I felt free to make some closeness of identity between right and God. I might have defined right as God in action, or God as right in conjunction with omnipotence, intelligence, and love; but I had no need for exactness of terms. In keeping near to right I knew I must be near to God: and near to God I could let myself go so far that no power on earth would seem strong enough to save me--and yet I should be saved. I went on then with a kind of fearlessness. If I was to marry Hugh I was convinced that I should be supported; if not, I was equally convinced that something would hold me back. "If anything should happen," I said to Cissie Boscobel one day, "I want you to look after Hugh." The dawn seemed to break over her, though she only said, tremulously: "Happen--how?" "I don't know. Perhaps nothing will. But if it does--" She slipped away, doubtless so as not to hear more. And then one evening, when I was not thinking especially about it, the Cloud came down on the Mountain; the voice spoke out of it, and my course was made plain. But before that night I also had received a cablegram. It was from my sister Louise, to say that the _King Arthur_, her husband's ship, had been blown up in the North Sea, and that he was among the lost. So the call was coming to me more sharply than I had yet heard it. With Lady Cecilia's example in mind, I said little to those about me beyond mentioning the fact. I suppose they showed me as much sympathy as the sweeping away of a mere brother-in-law demanded. They certainly said they were sorry, and hinted that that was what nations let themselves in for when they were so rash as to go to war. "Think we'd ever expose our fellows like that?" was Hugh's comment. "Not on your life!"