It was her brother who first dragged her out to a theatre. "My dear girl," he said, "you can’t go on burying yourself like this. Come to a show; it’ll do you all the good in the world." And Ruth, because he was home on leave, just thought it was a shame not to give him as good a time as possible; and so, just to please him, she went. She looked her best in black—and her brother’s "By Jove, old bean—you look topping!" as she came into the room before starting, sounded very pleasantly in her ears. Of course it didn’t much matter what she looked like—now: except that Jimmy had always been very particular. He wouldn’t like her not to look smart. It was the second act that made her roar with laughter, and she was so engrossed in the play that she failed to notice her brother glancing at her once or twice with a quiet smile of satisfaction. In fact, during the second act she quite forgot, and it was only as she stood up to go that it all came back to her mind. "Good show, wasn’t it?" said her brother. She smiled a little sadly. "I suppose so," she answered. "Somehow one doesn’t care very much in these days...." She sighed. "But anyway, you liked it, old man, and that’s all that matters." And her brother, who seemed on the point of saying something, changed his mind and remained silent. It was natural that Ruth should go to Portsdown. It was there she had met Jimmy: it was there they had become engaged. It would be very painful, and in a way she dreaded the tender, intimate, associations that all the well-known haunts would call up to her mind. Portsdown was so woven up round Jimmy—it would seem almost part of him. That sandy hillock, for instance, just beyond the third tee, where they had lazed away so many afternoons together. The people in the hotel when she arrived were just those she would have liked. A little elderly, perhaps, but that was in their favour. And she knew them all so intimately. She wondered why she had ever regarded Mrs. Garrett as a consequential old cat. Nothing could have been more charming than her sympathy and consideration, and the others took their tone from her. In fact, the subject of her loss seemed quite inexhaustible. There were one or two mistakes made, but that was only to be expected. "Maybe your husband will be being demobilized soon, miss," said Peter Gurney to her a couple of days after her arrival, as she stood on the first tee. To him she would always be miss, and with a faint smile Ruth Seaton turned towards him with her ball in her hand. "He was killed, Peter," she said—"killed on the Somme." Then she drove a low, clean-hit shot straight up the centre of the course. For a few moments he watched her slim figure as she walked after her ball, and then he went into his shop. "Hit me over the head with yon niblick, Bob," he remarked, in a voice which was not quite steady. "I surely am a damned, dunderheaded old fool."