thought, but it brought a sparkle
to his eyes and an electric force to his fingertips: he raised
his head and looked out into the September night as if there was
stirring in him the restless sap of spring. After all he was
still a young man. Forty years more! If these grey ten years
since the war could be taken as finite, not endless: if after
them one were to break the chain, tear off the hair shirt, come
out of one's cell into the warm sun--then, oh then--Val's
shoulders remembered their military set--life might be life
again and not life in death.

"What the devil are you strumming now?"

"Tipperary."

"That's not much in your line."

"Oh! I was in the Army once," said Val. "You go to sleep."

He had his wish. The heavy eyelids closed, the great chest rose
and fell evenly, and some--not all--of the deep lines of pain
were smoothed away from Bernard's lips. Even in sleep it was a
restless, suffering head, but it was no longer so devil-ridden as
when he was talking of his wife. Val played on softly: once when
he desisted Bernard stirred and muttered something which sounded
like "Go on, damn you," a proof that his mind was not far from
his body, only the thinnest of veils lying over its terrible
activity. David would have played the clock round, if Saul would
have slept on.

Saul did not. He woke--with a tremendous start, sure sign of
broken nerves: a start that shook him like a fall and shook the
couch too. "Hallo!" he came instantly into full possession of
his faculties: "you still here? What's the time? I feel as if
I'd been asleep for years. Why, it's daylight!" He dragged out
his watch. "What the devil is the time?"

Val rose and pulled back a curtain. The morning sky was full of
grey light, and long pale shadows fell over frost-silvered turf:
mists were steaming up like pale smoke from the river, over whose
surface they swept in fantastic shapes like ghosts taking hands
in an evanescent arabesque: the clouds, the birds, the flowers
were all awake. The house was awake too, and in fact it was the
clatter of a housemaid's brush on the staircase that had roused
Bernard. "It's nearly six o'clock," said Val. "You've had a long
sleep, Berns. I'm afraid the others have missed their train."

"Missed their train!"

"First night performances are often slow, and they mayn't have
been able to get a cab at once. It's tiresome, but there's no
cause for anxiety."

"Missed their train!"

"Well, t