Her wistful eyes strained towards the East, where between the crowded roofs of the vast City and the shadowy purple day-brow, showed a clear wide band of crocus-yellow, melting into exquisite hyacinth-blue.
"Perhaps I am like the antelope and the hares and the wild-bucks and the other creatures. It may be that this nameless Thing that I have felt coming nearer and nearer is War," said Lynette. Then she winced as though the net had whirled and fallen, and the trident pierced, and cried out irrepressibly: "If so—Bawne will be out there unprotected—in the midst of it! Owen!—do you hear me? How can you stand there so calmly when such a thing may be? How—oh!—how could you consent to his going?"
Saxham’s square face was set like a mask in the stern effort for self-control. He was in spirit with the Navigating Lieutenant on the upper bridge of H.M.S. _Rigasamos_, hearkening to the drone of an aëroplane struggling against the thrust of a north-west gale.... He heard the double knock of a back-fire, and heard men talking about engine-trouble. Even as he brought himself back to say quietly:
"I did as you would have done in the same circumstances. If the same voice that spoke to me had virtually said to you: ’_Here stands your only son, a child in years and yet a man for England! Will you let him go?_’ Would you not have consented? If you deny, I shall tell you that I know my wife better than she knows herself!"
"’_A child in years—a man for England_....’" The fold between her slender eyebrows deepened and the delicate sensitive upper-lip lifted, showing the white, slightly irregular teeth. "I do not understand," she said piteously; "Was there any question of an order to be carried out?—a duty to be done?"
"There was a question to be settled," said Saxham, "involving Bawne’s whole future. Here and Hereafter—and the question was this: Whether the son you have given me is worthy of his mother, or whether he has inherited any twist of brain, any degenerate and wretched weakness from the father whom your pure hand saved and led back, my guardian Saint, my heart’s beloved!—from the very threshold of the gates of Hell."
"Owen! Don’t speak so of yourself. I will not hear it. You had been so wronged—driven beside yourself by misfortune and betrayal. You were not responsible——" She covered the little ears with the slender hands. He took the hands down and kissed them, and held them in his own, as he went on: