an
added sense of her own futility. She felt that she wanted to do
something--but what was there for her to do?

Marriage, naturally, had come into her mental horizon. But there had
only been one man who had ever attracted her sufficiently to make it
anything but an idle speculation. There had been a time, one season in
London, when this man had been her constant companion, and she had been
far from disliking it. At times he had seemed to be serious, and as a
matter of fact the subtle difference between her and the stock pattern
crowd had interested him more than he admitted even to himself. Then
one day she discovered that a certain flat and its occupant were very
closely connected with his bank account. It was by pure accident that
she found it out. A chance remark which she overheard at a dinner
party. . . . And the night before at the Grafton Galleries she had
allowed him to kiss her as she had never before allowed a man . . .

It revolted her; and the man, astonished at first at her sudden change
of manner, finally became annoyed, and the episode ceased. They still
met; there was no quarrel--but they met only as casual acquaintances.

It was at that stage of her reflections that a shadow fell across her
and she looked up. For a moment the coincidence failed to strike her,
and then with a surprised little laugh she held out her hand.

"Why, Derek," she said, "I was just thinking of you."

Vane, his right arm tightly bound in a sling, sat down beside her.

"I thought you looked pretty weary," he laughed. "Jove! but it's great
seeing you again, Margaret . . .! And the peace of it all." He waved
his left hand round the deserted beach. "Why, it's like old
times--before the world went mad" . . . He fumbled with his cigarette
case, until she took it out of his hand, and struck a match for him.

"What ward are you in?" she asked, when he had made himself comfortable.

"Number 13; got here yesterday."

"I come on night duty there to-night. What's your trouble?"

"Machine-gun," he answered briefly. "A nice clean one through the
shoulder. And the man beside me took the next bullet through his
heart." He laughed shortly. "What a gamble--what a dam silly gamble,
isn't it?"

She looked thoughtfully out to sea. The train of ideas his sudden
appearance had interrupted was still half consciously occupying her
mind.

"Four years, isn't it, since we met?" she said after a while.

"Four centuries, y