hurry back to
town. He never saw Mallow or Craig again. The battle itself became a
hazy incident. In life affairs of this order generally have abrupt
endings.

And all that day Elsa had been waiting patiently to hear sounds of him
in the next room. Never could she recall such long weary hours. Time
and again she changed a piece of ribbon, a bit of lace, and twice she
changed her dress, all for the purpose of making the hours pass more
quickly. She had gone down to luncheon, but Warrington had not come
in. After luncheon she had sent out for half a dozen magazines.
Beyond the illustrations she never knew what they contained. Over and
over she conned the set phrases she was going to say when finally he
came. Whenever Martha approached, Elsa told her that she wanted
nothing, that she was head-achy, and wanted to be left alone.
Discreetly Martha vanished.

To prevent the possibility of missing Warrington, Elsa had engaged the
room boy to loiter about down-stairs and to report to her the moment
Warrington arrived. The boy came pattering up at a quarter to six.

"He come. He downside. I go, he come top-side?"

"No. That will be all."

The boy kotowed, and Elsa gave him a sovereign.

The following ten minutes tested her patience to the utmost. Presently
she heard the banging of a trunk-lid. He was there. And now that he
was there, she, who had always taken pride in her lack of feminine
nerves, found herself in the grip of a panic that verged on hysteria.
Her heart fluttered and missed a beat. It had been so easy to plan!
She was afraid. Perhaps the tension of waiting all these hours was the
cause. With an angry gesture she strove to dismiss the feeling of
trepidation by walking resolutely to her door. Outside she stopped.

What was she going to say to him? The trembling that struck at her
knees was wholly a new sensation. Presently the tremor died away, but
it left her weak. She stepped toward his door and knocked gently on
the jamb. No one answered. She knocked again, louder.

"Come in!"

"It wouldn't be proper," she replied, with a flash of her old-time
self. "Won't you please come out?"

She heard something click as it struck the floor. (It was Warrington's
cutty which he had carried for seven years, now in smithereens.) She
saw a hand, raw knuckled and bleeding slightly, catch at the curtain
and swing it back rattling upon its rings.

"Miss Chetwood?" he said.

"Yes . . . Oh,