The war came, and Aubrey was very happy at his pastime, legalised at last, in Flanders, and grew to be a brigadier. And Gloria grew to be a woman, for she had somehow seemed very young until then. The war gasped to conclusion, and soon Aubrey was in South America, in the darkness beyond the upper reaches of the Amazon. And when, one evening, he returned to Malmanor, he found that Gloria was gone. II In the vast hall-way of the house, with men tramping about the stone floor bringing in his luggage and his trophies, the butler very silently gave him a slim letter. Aubrey Carlyle looked at the handwriting on the letter, and then at the silent servant. “When did my wire arrive?” “At six o’clock last night, sir.” And then Aubrey knew the letter in his hand to hold the greatest shock of his life. But he was not a dramatic man, he did not take his surprises dramatically. He put the letter into his pocket. “And then, Hunt?” “Sir?” “And then?” “Madam left by the eleven o’clock London train this morning, sir. She took luggage.” “I will have a bath now. Very hot, tell Vesey. Dinner at the usual time. Thank you, Hunt.” Twenty-five years had Hunt been with his master; ten years longer than Gloria. Aubrey had his bath, very hot. And then he put on those nice, slack, black things which so advantage a man’s looks at night; and with them he always wore a soft shirt, for Aubrey would have seen the greatest hostess in the land to blazes rather than be uncomfortable in a stiff one. For a long time he sat on the broad window-seat in his bedroom and looked out on the avenue of tall trees that joined his park to the distant shroud of Carmion Wood. The prospect was very fair in the soft evening light. God is like a woman in the evenings, He makes the land look so shy. And then he heard Gloria’s voice, but it was very distant, for it came from across a wide valley. He just heard Gloria’s voice, but he could not make out what she was saying. And he remembered sudden little phrases of hers in her fine, whispering voice, little broken phrases, and how she would smile very crookedly, and how her great eyes would queerly cloud over. And then he read the letter. It was a very short letter. It was after ten o’clock when he passed from the dining-room into the drawing-room. Hunt entered after him to draw the curtains across the French windows, but he was told to let them be; and Hunt switched on the lights, but he was told to switch them off again and that nothing more would be required of him that night. Again Aubrey read the letter. It was a very short letter. “You know why, dear. Good-bye. Gloria.” He was angry, because he didn’t know why; he had not the faintest idea why. But anger is no sort of a weapon with which to fight solitude, and this was the most solitary moment of Aubrey Carlyle’s life, he who had hunted wild beasts in the loneliest places of the Americas.