than she
remembered; for anguish is no beautifier.

So standing, they mutely confronted the change in themselves--in each
other; then Rose swept forward, both hands held out.

"Roy--my darling--_what_ you must have been through! Can you--will
you--in spite of all----?"

Next moment, in his silent, vehement fashion, he was straining her to
him; kissing her eyes, her hair, her lips; not in simple lover's
ecstasy, but in a fervour of repressed passion, touched with tragedy,
with pain....

Then he held her from him, to refresh his tired eyes with the sheer
beauty of her; and was struck at once by the absence of colour; the wide
black sash, the black velvet round her throat and hair.

He touched the velvet, looking his question. She nodded, drawing in her
lip to steady it.

"I felt--I must. You don't mind?"

"_Mind_----?--Sometimes I wonder if I shall ever really _mind_ things
any more."

His face worked. That queer dizziness took him again. With an incoherent
apology, he sat down rather abruptly, and leaned forward, his head
between his hands, hiding the emotion he could not altogether control.

Rose stood beside him, feeling helpless and vaguely aggrieved. He had
just got back to her, after a two weeks' parting, and he sat there lost
in an access of grief that left her quite out of account. Inadvertently
there flashed the thought, "Whatever Lance might have suffered, he would
not succumb." It startled her. She had never so compared them before....

Then, looking down at his bowed head, compunction seized her, and
tenderness, that rarely entered into her feeling for men. She could
think of nothing to say that would not sound idiotically commonplace. So
she laid her hand on his hair, and moved it caressingly now and then.

She felt a tremor go through him. He half withdrew his head, checked
himself, and capturing her hand, pressed it to his lips, that were hot
and feverish.

"Roy--what is it? What went wrong?" she asked softly.

He looked up now with a fair imitation of a smile. "Just--an old memory.
It was dear of you. Ungracious of me."--Pain and perplexity went from
her. She slipped to her knees beside him, and his arm enclosed her.
"Sorry to behave like this. But I'm not very fit. And--seeing you,
brought it all back so sharply! It's been--a bit of a strain, this last
week. A letter from Thea--brave, of course; but broken utterly. The
wedding too: and that beast of a journey fairly finished me."

She le