Trees, bushes, fences flew past and fled away behind in the dusk.  It seemed to her as though she was being tossed through space locked in his arms; infinite depths of shadow whirled and eddied around her; limitless reaches, vistas unfathomable stretched toward outer chaos into which they were hurled, unseeing, her arms around his neck, her soft face on his breast.

Then a lantern flashed; voices sounded in far-off confusion; more lanterns twinkled and glimmered; more voices broke in on their heavenly isolation.

Was the divine flight ended?

Somebody said:  “Colonel Arran is here, and is still alive, but his mind is clouding.  He says he is waiting for his son to come.”

Dizzy, burning hot, half blinded, she felt herself swung out of space onto the earth again, through a glare of brightness in which Celia’s face seemed to be framed, edged with infernal light. . . .  And another face, Camilla’s, was there in the confusing brilliancy; and she reeled a little, embraced, held hot and close; and in her dulled ears drummed Celia’s voice, murmuring, pitying, complaining, adoring: 

“Honey-bell—­Oh, my little Honey-bud!  I have you back in my a’ms, and I have my boy, and I’m ve’y thankful to my Heavenly Master—­I certainly am, Honey-bee!—­fo’ His goodness and His mercy which He is showing eve’y day to me and mine.”

And Camilla’s pale face was pressed against her hot cheeks and the girl’s black sleeve of crape encircled her neck.

She whispered:  “I—­I try to think it reconciles me to losing Jimmy. . . .  War gave me Stephen. . . .  Yet—­oh, I cannot understand why God’s way must sometimes be the way of battle!”

Ailsa saw and heard and understood, yet, all around her fell an unreal light—­a terrible fiery radiance, making voices the voices, of phantoms, forms the outlines of ghosts.

Through an open door she saw a lamp-lit room where her lover knelt beside a bed—­saw a man’s arm reach feebly toward him—­and saw no more.  Everything wavered and dazzled and brightened into rainbow tints around her, then to scarlet; then velvety darkness sprang up, through which she fell into swift unconsciousness.

One of the doctors, looking at her as she lay on the hospital cot, dropped his hand gravely on her thin wrist.

“You cannot tell me anything that I don’t know about Mrs. Paige,” he said wearily.  “This is a complete breakdown.  It’s come just in time, too, that girl has been trying to kill herself.  I understand that her furlough has arrived.  You’d better get her North on the next transport.  I guess that our angels are more popular in our hospitals just now than they would be tuning little gilt harps aloft.  We can’t spare ’em, Mrs. Craig, and I guess the Most High can wait a little longer.”

Doctor, ward-master, apothecary, and nurses stood looking down at the slim, fever-flushed shape moving restlessly on the cot—­babbling soft inconsequences, staring out of brilliant eyes at nothing.