"Are you going, Anthony?"

"The boy didn't shirk his duty. Why should I?"

She looked at him squarely and the most poignant simulacrum of a
smile I have ever seen flitted over her lips.

"Why not, darling? Duncan will keep me company till you come
back."

He kissed his wife, a trifle more demonstratively than he had ever
done in alien presence, and with a nod at me, went out of the
room.

And suddenly she burst into sobbing again.

"I know it's wrong and wicked and foolish," she said brokenly.
"But I can't help it. Oh, God! I can't help it."

Then, like an ass, I began to cry, too; for I loved the boy, and
that perhaps helped her on a bit.





CHAPTER II