had changed to black night.

"No, he will not come," she said at last, in a low wail of anguish. She
rose and turned to Hillyard. Her face glimmered against the darkness
deathly white and her eyes shone with sorrow.

"It was kind and wise of you to wish to spare me," she said. "Oh, I can
picture to myself how coldly he heard you. He never meant to come here
this afternoon."

Stella Croyle was wrong, just as Hillyard had been. Harry Luttrell had
meant to pay his farewell visit to Stella Croyle, knowing well that he
was unlikely ever to come back, and understanding that he owed her it.
But an incident drove the whole matter from his thoughts, and the
incident was just one instance to show how wide a gulf now separated
these two.

He had called at a nursing home close to Portland Place where a Colonel
Oakley lay dying of a malignant disease. Oakley had been the chief
spirit of reviving the moral and the confidence of the disgraced
Clayfords. He had laboured unflinchingly to restore its discipline, to
weld it into one mind, with dishonour to redeem, and a single arm to
redeem it. He had lived for nothing else--until the internal trouble
laid him aside. Luttrell called at half-past three to tell him that all
was well with his old battalion, and was met by a nurse who shook her
head.

"The last two days he has been lying, except for a minute here and
there, in a coma. You may see him if you like, but it is a question of
hours."

Luttrell went into the bedroom where the sick man lay, so thin of face
and hand, so bloodless. But it seemed that the Fates wished to deal the
Colonel one last ironic stroke, before they let him die. For, while
Luttrell yet stood in the room, Colonel Oakley's eyes opened. This last
moment of consciousness was his, the very last; and while it still
endured, suddenly, down Portland Place, with its drums beating, its
soldiers singing, marched a battalion. The song and the music swelled,
the tramp of young, active, vigorous soldiers echoed and reached down
the quiet street. Colonel Oakley turned his face to his pillow and burst
into tears; the bitterness of death was given him to drink in
overflowing measure. It seemed as though a jibe was flung at him.

The tramp of the battalion had not yet died away when Oakley sank again
into unconsciousness.

"It was pretty rough that he should just wake up to hear that and to
know that he would never have part in it, eh?" said Luttrell, speaking
in a low