But presently Ruth spoke again, and, looking up, he met the old comforting friendliness of her smile. Her serenity had returned. Her face looked white and very worn, but it was no longer marred with fear. “I am sorry,” she said, “and I am ashamed to have been so foolish, to have let myself think for a moment that we should fail. Hate is very strong and very terrible; but love is stronger and very beautiful. Let us only make ourselves into fit instruments for its power. We _must_. If Karl von Schäde lasts beyond, so too, more surely still, does Dick Carey. Why should we be afraid? Will you give to Karl von Schäde the instruments for his power and deny them to the friend you loved? And is it so difficult after all? Think what he must have suffered, his poor body broken into pieces, his mind full of anguish that his country was ruined, beaten, and full of the horrors he had seen and which he attributed to us. Think of those last awful hours of his, and have you at least no pity? Try for it, reach out for it, get yourself into that mind which you knew as Dick Carey. Take Karl van Schäde into it too in your thought.” She stopped, her voice broken, but the light that shone in her face was like a star. “I will try,” said Roger North. In the pause that followed the approaching clatter of Lady Condor’s re-entry was almost a relief. She brought them back into the regions of ordinary everyday things. Violet, too, was laughing, getting more like herself. The tension relaxed. “Miss Seer, if I had planted my dahlias among yours, really you would, never have found it out. They are an amazing imitation—quite amazing. Condor thinks my taste in hats too loud. But if men had their way we should all dress in black. So depressing! Tea? I should love it. But no, I cannot stay. I have a duty party at home. So dull, but Condor is determined that Hawkhurst shall stand for the Division now he is safely tucked away in the other House himself. All the old party business is beginning again, just as if there had been no war, when we were all shrieking ‘No more party politics.’ ‘No more hidden policies.’ So like us, isn’t it? I shall put Caroline Holmes in the chair at all the women’s meetings. She does so love it—and making speeches. Yes. She is to marry her Major this autumn, but she assures me it will not ‘curtail her activities.’ Curtail! so nice! But where was I? Oh yes, my tea-party, and I would so much rather stay here. I remember I was just going to be clever, and what happened? Oh, we went out to see Violet milk, and we saw the dahlias instead. Good-bye. Good-bye. And come soon to see me.” So Lady Condor conveyed herself, talking steadily, outside the sitting-room, with Roger North in attendance carrying her various belongings. But as she progressed across the hall, and into her waiting car, she fell upon a most unusual silence. It was not until she was well settled in that she spoke again.