e dream. He was a mourner
at his own funeral, indifferent to all around him, yet voluptuously
moved. So violently did the hero and the sentimentalist unite in that
strange composite being that was Nevill Tyson.

He drew his chair a little nearer to her bed. "Molly--supposing I wanted
to go abroad again some of these days, would you very much mind?"

There was a slight quivering of the limbs under the bedclothes, but Mrs.
Nevill Tyson said nothing.

"You see, going back to Thorneytoft is out of the question for you and
me. I think we made the place a bit too hot to hold us. And you hate it,
don't you?"

She murmured some assent.

"And if I stick here doing nothing I shan't be able to stand things much
longer; I feel as if I should go off my head. I oughtn't to be doing
nothing, a great hulking fellow like me."

"No, no; it would never do. But why must you go--abroad? Aren't there
things--"

He felt that his only chance was to throw himself as it were naked on her
sympathy. "I must go--sooner or later. I can't settle--never could.
Traveling is in my blood and in my brain. I'm home-sick, Molly--home-sick
for foreign countries, that's all. I shall come back again. You don't
think I want to leave you, surely?"

He looked into her eyes; there was no reproach there, only melancholy
intelligence. She knew the things that are impossible.

"No. I think you'd rather stay with me--if you could. When shall you go?"

He turned aside. "I don't know. I mayn't go at all. I don't want to talk
about it any more."

It was hopeless to talk about it.

He had found his men, fifty brave fellows in all, ordered his outfit and
booked his passage, before he could make up his mind to break the news to
her, for there was the risk of breaking her heart too.

And now it wanted but two days before his departure.

Coming out of the War Office he met Stanistreet. They walked together as
far as Charing Cross.

"Yes," said Tyson, "the thing's done now. I'm off to the Soudan with
fifty other fellows--glorious devils--and we mean fighting this time.
It's the old field, you see, and the old enemy."

"When do you sail?"

"Wednesday--midnight. See me off?"

"Yes. It's the least I can do."

"Thanks, Stanny." He made a cut at the air with his walking-stick. "Don't
you wish you'd half my luck? You poor devils never get a chance. By Jove!
if I'd only stuck to _mine_!"

They parted. Not a word of his wife.

Stanistreet looked back over h