“He wants you to go up and stay with him, Bob.”

“Why not both of us?”

“He wants Nollie to come down to me; she’s not well.”

“Not well?  What’s the matter?”

To tell him seemed disloyalty to her sex; not to tell him, disloyalty to her husband.  A simple consideration of fact and not of principle, decided her.  He would certainly say in a moment:  ‘Here!  Pitch it over!’ and she would have to.  She said tranquilly: 

“You remember that night when Cyril Morland went away, and Noel behaved so strangely.  Well, my dear; she is going to have a child at the beginning of April.  The poor boy is dead, Bob; he died for the Country.”

She saw the red tide flow up into his face.

“What!”

“Poor Edward is dreadfully upset.  We must do what we can.  I blame myself.”  By instinct she used those words.

“Blame yourself?  Stuff!  That young—!” He stopped.

Thirza said quietly:  “No, Bob; of the two, I’m sure it was Noel; she was desperate that day.  Don’t you remember her face?  Oh! this war!  It’s turned the whole world upside down.  That’s the only comfort; nothing’s normal”

Bob Pierson possessed beyond most men the secret of happiness, for he was always absorbed in the moment, to the point of unself-consciousness.  Eating an egg, cutting down a tree, sitting on a Tribunal, making up his accounts, planting potatoes, looking at the moon, riding his cob, reading the Lessons—­no part of him stood aside to see how he was doing it, or wonder why he was doing it, or not doing it better.  He grew like a cork-tree, and acted like a sturdy and well-natured dog.  His griefs, angers, and enjoyments were simple as a child’s, or as his somewhat noisy slumbers.  They were notably well-suited, for Thirza had the same secret of happiness, though her, absorption in the moment did not—­as became a woman—­prevent her being conscious of others; indeed, such formed the chief subject of her absorptions.  One might say that they neither of them had philosophy yet were as philosophic a couple as one could meet on this earth of the self-conscious.  Daily life to these two was still of simple savour.  To be absorbed in life—­the queer endless tissue of moments and things felt and done and said and made, the odd inspiriting conjunctions of countless people—­was natural to them; but they never thought whether they were absorbed or not, or had any particular attitude to Life or Death—­a great blessing at the epoch in which they were living.

Bob Pierson, then, paced the room, so absorbed in his dismay and concern, that he was almost happy.

“By Jove!” he said, “what a ghastly thing!

“Nollie, of all people!  I feel perfectly wretched, Thirza; wretched beyond words.”  But with each repetition his voice grew cheerier, and Thirza felt that he was already over the worst.

“Your coffee’s getting cold!” she said.