We drove our last stage with heavy hearts. Southampton was shrouded in the first fog of the year; and, when it lifted on the confines of the New Forest, I saw bare trees, dead leaves and all November’s decay. Every few minutes O’Rane asked me what point we had now reached; and I knew that for him too every turn of the road was marked by a memory and guarded by a ghost. Through eyes half-closed I could see Jim Loring and the Daintons striding, three abreast, on a leave-out walk from Melton to Crowley; I could see Eric Lane piloting me through Lashmar village to call on his father. . . . Strange! Though he was now dead, though I had almost loved him and though we had both been punished for trying to play a game according to its rules, I could not forgive him for flinging this last shadow across Barbara’s life, I could not whisper his name without a shudder. As we drove through a country that was haunted with the shades of our dead selves, I fell to thinking whether a man was happier in the discontent of eighteen or the disillusion of thirty-eight. I no longer aspired to Westminster Abbey and a nation’s gratitude; but, like other men on the threshold of middle-age, I made the discovery, incomprehensible to a schoolboy, that I had no heir to shelter himself under the trees which I had planted; and love seemed almost to have been left out of my life. In Crawleigh village, my nerve broke and I headed for London; then, for very shame in the reproach of O’Rane’s silence, I turned, though I knew that no love was awaiting me here, and splashed through the floods to the Abbey. Neave was fishing perfunctorily by the bridge and volunteered to take the car up to the house if I wanted to look for Barbara. “The guv’nor’s in London for this Unknown Soldier business,” he explained. “So it’s only the four of us. Just right for a nice game of cards.” “How’s Babs?,” I asked, as unconcernedly as I could. “Oh, fit as a flea,” he answered. “She’s wandering about the park, waiting for you.” I made a pretence of hurrying forward as the car shot ahead; then, as it passed out of sight, I leaned against the parapet of the bridge till the low grey line of the refectory wall deepened to black and was gradually lost in the oncoming tide of darkness. I was still there when the first rare lights twinkled at the windows and paled as the curtains were drawn. Then I heard a distant whistle and turned to the house before my impulse to hurry away got the better of me. I was halfway to the gardens when I saw the white coil of Barbara’s furs. “Darling! I was expecting you hours ago!,” she cried. “Did you have a breakdown? I hope I didn’t upset your plans by asking you to come here, George: I wanted you most awfully.”