So she slept till the stars faded, then, awaking, lifted her head, bewildered, drawing her hand from his; and saw the dawn graying his face where he sat beside her.

She sat up, rigid, on the blanket, the vivid colour staining her from throat to brow; then memory overwhelmed her.  She covered her eyes with both arms and her head dropped forward under the beauty of her disordered hair.

Minute succeeded minute; neither spoke nor moved.  Then, slowly, in silence, she looked up at him and met his gaze.  It was her confession of faith.

He could scarcely hear her words, so tremulously low was the voice that uttered them.

“Dr. Benton told me everything.  Take me back.  The world is empty without you.  I’ve been through the depths of it—­my heart has searched it from the ends to the ends of it. . . .  And finds no peace where you are not—­no hope—­no life.  All is desolation without you.  Take me back.”

She stretched out her hands to him; he took them, and pressed them against his lips; and looking across at him, she said: 

“Love me—­if you will—­as you will.  I make no terms; I ask none.  Teach me your way; your way is mine—­if it leads to you; all other paths are dark, all other ways are strange.  I know, for I have trodden them, and lost myself.  Only the path you follow is lighted for me.  All else is darkness.  Love me.  I ask no terms.”

“Ailsa, I can offer none.”

“I know.  You have said so.  That is enough.  Besides, if you love me, nothing else matters.  My life is not my own; it is yours.  It has always been yours—­only I did not know how completely.  Now I have learned. . . .  Why do you look at me so strangely?  Are you afraid to take me for yourself?  Do you think I do not know what I am saying?  Do you not understand what the terror of these days without you has done to me?  The inclination which lacked only courage lacks it no longer.  I know what you have been, what you are.  I ask nothing more of life than you.”

“Dear,” he said, “do you understand that I can never marry you?”

“Yes,” she said steadily.  “I am not afraid.”

In the silence the wooden shutter outside the window swung to with a slam in the rising breeze which had become a wind blowing fitfully under a wet gray sky.  From above the roof there came a sudden tearing sound, which at first he believed to be the wind.  It increased to a loud, confusing, swishing whistle, as though hundreds of sabres were being whirled in circles overhead.

Berkley rose, looking upward at the ceiling as the noise grew in volume like a torrent of water flowing over rocks.

Ailsa also had risen, laying one hand on his arm, listening intently.

“What is it?” she breathed.

“It is the noise made by thousands of bullets streaming through the air above us.  It sounds like that in the rifle-pits.  Listen!”