"I put off telling you," he began lamely.

"So that this evening of mine with you might not be spoilt," she
returned. "But, my dear, my evening was already spoilt before the launch
left the yacht gangway. I am not so blind."

Stella Croyle was at this date twenty-six years old; and it was
difficult to picture her any older. Partly because of her vivid
colouring and because she was abrim with life; partly because in her
straightness of limb and the clear treble of her voice, she was boyish.
"What a pretty boy she would make!" was the first thought until you
noticed the slim delicacy of her hands and feet, the burnish of gold on
the dark wealth of her hair, the fine chiselling of brow and nose and
chin. Then it was seen that she was all woman. She was tall and yet
never looked tall. It seemed that you could pick her up with a finger,
but try and she warned you of the weakness of your arm. She was a
baffling person. She ran and walked with the joyous insolence of
eighteen, yet at any moment some veil might be rolled up in her eyes and
face to show you for one tragic instant a Lady of Sorrows.

She leaned towards Luttrell, and as Hardiman had foreseen the perfume of
her hair stormed his senses.

"Tell me!" she breathed, and Luttrell, with his arguments and reasons
cut and dried and conned over pat for delivery, began nevertheless to
babble. There were the Olympic Games. She herself must have seen how
they were fatal to their own purpose. Troubles were coming--battles
behind the troubles. All soldiers knew! They knew this too--the phrase
of a young Lieutenant-Colonel lecturing at the Staff College.

"Battles are not won either by sheer force or pure right, but by the one
or the other of those two Powers which has Discipline as its Chief of
Staff."

He was implying neither very tactfully nor clearly that he was on the
way to dwindling into an undisciplined soldier. But it did not matter in
the least. For Stella Croyle was not listening. All this was totally
unimportant. Men always went about and about when they had difficult
things to say to women. Her eyes never left his face and she would know
surely enough when those words were rising to his lips which it was
necessary that she should mark and understand. Meanwhile her
perplexities and fears grew.

"Of course it can't be _that_," she assured herself again and again, but
with a dreadful catch at her heart. "Oh no, it can't be _that_."

"That," was the separation