against his face. And it was
as if Desmond had never been.

A little while ago he had hated Desmond because she had come before
Veronica; she had taken what belonged to Veronica, the first tremor of
his passion, the irrecoverable delight and surprise. And now he knew
that, because he had not loved her, she had taken nothing.

* * * * *

"Do you love me?"

"Do you love _me_?"

"You know I love you."

"You know. You know."

What they said was new and wonderful to them as if nobody before them
had ever thought of it.

Yet that night, all over the Heath, in hollows under the birch-trees,
and on beds of trampled grass, young lovers lay in each other's arms and
said the same thing in the same words: "Do you love me?" "You know I
love you!" over and over, in voices drowsy and thick with love.

* * * * *

"There's one thing I haven't thought of," said Nicky. "And that's that
damned strike. If it hits Daddy badly we may have to wait goodness knows
how long. Ages we may have to."

"I'd wait all my life if I could have you in the last five seconds of
it. And if I couldn't, I'd still wait."

And presently Veronica remembered Michael.

"Why did you ask me whether Mick had said anything?"

"Because I thought you ought to know about it before you--Besides, if he
_had_, we should have had to wait a bit before we told him."

It seemed that there was nothing to prevent them marrying to-morrow if
they liked. The strike, Anthony said, couldn't hit him as badly as
all that.

He and Frances sat up till long past midnight, talking about their
plans, and the children's plans. It was all settled. The first week in
August they would go down to Morfe for the shooting. They would stay
there till the first week in September. Nicky and Veronica would be
married the first week in October. And they would go to France and
Belgium and Germany for their honeymoon.

XIX

They did not go down to Morfe the first week in August for the shooting.

Neither did Lawrence Stephen go to Ireland on Monday, the third. At the
moment when he should have been receiving the congratulations of the
Dublin Nationalists after his impassioned appeal for militant
consolidation, Mr. Redmond and Sir Edward Carson were shaking hands
dramatically in the House of Commons. Stephen's sublime opportunity, the
civil war, had been snatched from him by the unforeseen.

And there was no chance o