The words broke off, but her eyes spoke in reply to his, and her sudden whiteness.  He drew her to him, and folded her close.

’I don’t think I ought’—­the faltering, broken voice startled her—­’I don’t know whether I can make you happy.  Dear, dear little Beryl!’

At that she put up her mouth instinctively, only to shrink back under the energy of his kiss.  Then they had walked on together, hand in hand; but she remembered that, even before they left the wood, something seemed to have dimmed the extraordinary bliss of the first moment—­some restlessness in him—­some touch of absent-mindedness, as though he grudged himself his own happiness.

And so it had been ever since.  He had resumed his work at Aldershot, and owing to certain consequences of the wound in 1915 was not likely, in spite of desperate efforts on his own part, to be sent back to the front.  His letters varied just as his presence did.  Something always seemed to be kept back from her—­was always beyond her reach.  Sometimes she supposed she was not clever enough, that he found her inadequate and irresponsive.  Sometimes, with a sudden, half-guilty sense of disloyalty to him, she vaguely wondered whether there was some secret in his life—­some past of which she knew nothing.  How could there be?  A man of stainless and brilliant reputation—­modest, able, foolhardily brave, of whom all men spoke warmly; of a sensitive refinement too, which made it impossible to think of any ordinary vulgar skeleton in the background of his life.

Yet her misgivings had grown and grown upon her, till now they were morbidly strong.  She did not satisfy him; she was not making him happy; it would be better for her to set him free.  This action of his father’s offered the opportunity.  But as she thought of doing it—­how she would do it, and how he might possibly accept it—­she was torn with misery.

She and her girl-friend Pamela were very different.  She was the elder by a couple of years, and much more mature.  But Pamela’s undeveloped powers, the flashes of daring, of romance, in the awkward reserved girl, the suggestion in her of a big and splendid flowering, fascinated Beryl, and in her humility she never dreamt that she, with her delicate pensiveness, the mingled subtlety and purity of her nature, was no less exceptional.  She had been brought up very much alone.  Her mother was no companion for her, and the brother nearest her own age and nearest her heart had been killed at the opening of the war.  Arthur and she were very good friends, but not altogether congenial.  She was rather afraid of him—­of his critical temper, and his abrupt intolerant way, with people or opinions he disliked.  Beryl was quite aware of his effect on Pamela Mannering, and it made her anxious.  For she saw little chance for Pamela.  Before the war, Arthur in London had been very much sought after, in a world where women are generally good-looking, and skilled besides in all the arts of pursuit.  His standards were ridiculously high.  His women friends were many and of the best.  Why should he be attracted by anything so young and immature as Pamela?