ct itself that in one short week, he would have left
her, would be facing death or mutilation, day after day, in the trenches
on the Ypres salient. While he held her, all sorts of images flitted
through his mind--of which he would not have told her for the
world--horrible facts of bloody war. In eight months he had seen plenty
of them. The signs of them were graven on his young face, on his eyes,
round which a slight permanent frown, as of perplexity, seemed to have
settled, and on his mouth which was no longer naif and boyish, but would
always drop with repose into a hard compressed line.

Nelly looked up.

'Everything's far away'--she whispered--'but this--and you!' He kissed
her upturned lips--and there was silence.

Then a robin singing outside in the evening hush, sent a message to
them. Nelly with an effort drew herself away.

'Shan't we go out? We'll tell Mrs. Weston to put supper on the table,
and we can come in when we like. But I'll just unpack a little first--in
our room.'

She disappeared through a door at the end of the sitting-room. Her last
words--softly spoken--produced a kind of shock of joy in Sarratt. He sat
motionless, hearing the echo of them, till she reappeared. When she came
back, she had taken off her serge travelling dress and was wearing a
little gown of some white cotton stuff, with a blue cloak, the evening
having turned chilly, and a hat with a blue ribbon. In this garb she was
a vision of innocent beauty; wherein refinement and a touch of
strangeness combined with the dark brilliance of eyes and hair, with the
pale, slightly sunburnt skin, the small features and tiny throat, to
rivet the spectator. And she probably knew it, for she flushed slightly
under her husband's eyes.

'Oh, what a paradise!' she said, under her breath, pointing to the scene
beyond the window. Then--lifting appealing hands to him--'Take me
there!'

CHAPTER II

The newly-married pair crossed a wooden bridge over the stream from the
Lake, and found themselves on its further shore, a shore as untouched
and unspoilt now as when Wordsworth knew it, a hundred years ago. The
sun had only just vanished out of sight behind the Grasmere fells, and
the long Westmorland after-glow would linger for nearly a couple of
hours yet. After much rain the skies were clear, and all the omens fair.
But the rain had left its laughing message behind; in the full river, in
the streams leaping down the fells, in the freshness