The young man even then looked at nothing but the disappearing figure of Helen Hereford. He stared at it as if he wanted to follow her, then wheeled about and went out by the opposite door. He called out to Jones: “I am going to have a bit of air before luncheon.” * * * * * How that day passed she never knew. She had gone to Patricia and kissed her under her wedding veil, and there had been the bustle in the busy house--countless things to be done, to be decided--endless messages and calls. No one saw Captain Ramsay or knew where he had gone and, at dinner, when the host asked for him, a manservant answered: “Captain Ramsay was called over the phone by a brother officer and has gone to the club. He has taken his traps.” “_Après la guerre comme à la guerre!_” said Cynthia Moore. “Manners! That’s the Earl of Moray all over!” And she made a grimace at Mrs. Hereford as much as to say: “You packed him off at last, and no wonder.” He had simply fled, and the shame and the degradation sickened her to the soul. He had not given her time to recover from his passionate declarations before he had stolen under her very eyes, one might say, under her very kisses. How had he dared to touch her? How _had_ he dared? By dinner time she was so overcome by her wretchedness that she was obliged to go to her boudoir to shut herself away. As she saw him on the little photograph by the side of his machine, ready to ascend--and in another near the broken wing of a fallen plane after an accident, she thought: “Far better to have died than to have come back to this! What must this day have been for him?” All day she disputed with herself, loathing herself one moment, believing him innocent the next. Her husband had come out to Waybrook early. He, as well as Cynthia Moore, thought that Mrs. Hereford had sent the young man away. Hereford came in to his wife’s room just before dinner. “I’ll be glad when all this is over and you can rest.” She looked at him gratefully. He seemed so true and honorable. She turned away that he might not see her tears. “I am dog tired, Tommy, and I’ll be glad, too, when it’s all over.”