To Nan Ellis, Julian's espousal of the cause of the stranger within the gate was as music in the ear and as honey in the mouth. Good! good! She applauded him with hands and lips and eyes.
On leaving the dining-room, everybody began to put on hats and wraps.
"Oh, yes, hadn't you heard, Mr. Julian? Fearful excitement! A mine has been washed up on the coast. And you, Madge," urged her father, who needed no urging whatever, "you've got to come and look at it, too."
They all went down to the beach, and walked in the moonlight, by the incoming tide, a quarter of a mile north of the pier.
Miss Greta carried her coat on her arm at first. _Would_ Mr. Napier be so kind? He stopped to help her into the voluminous white canvas ulster. "It isn't true, is it," she said in a low, earnest voice, "that you've joined an O. T. C. and go drilling in the park after working hours?"
"Plenty of men do that," he said, struggling to enable Miss Greta to find the armhole.
"_Not men like you!_" she whispered. "And when you aren't working with Sir William, you go route marching, or trench digging for a holiday!"
Napier had been one of the first of his world who refused to accept the fact of not being bred a soldier as an excuse for not becoming one. But that Miss Greta should be one of the few to know the fact did not please him. "Oh, the sleeve's wrong side out," he said; "that's why."
The ulster had to come off again. "Surely,"--she turned the sleeve with deliberation--"surely you know that before you are nearly ready for a commission, peace will be declared."
"Well, of course, when the Germans have taken Paris. There now--" she stopped short again, making of her compunction an excuse to widen the distance between themselves and the rest of the party. "I've gone in my bungling way and said something I oughtn't to. I, who would rather offend anybody on earth than you."
"I don't know why you should say that." He began to walk on.
There was something unnerving in the appealing sorrow of the question. Why, in the name of all the gods, hadn't he kept up with the others?
"I think you do know," she said, a pace or two behind his hurrying figure.
Napier didn't look round, but he was sure that the tears in her voice had risen to her eyes.