“Not quite so bad as that, Nollie; but Mr. Fort is certainly subversive.  I think perhaps he has seen too many queer sides of life.”

“I like him the better for that.”

“Well, well,” Pierson answered absently.  He had work to do in preparation for a Confirmation Class, and sought his study on getting in.

Noel went to the dining-room to drink her hot milk.  The curtains were not drawn, and bright moonlight was coming in.  Without lighting up, she set the etna going, and stood looking at the moon-full for the second time since she and Cyril had waited for it in the Abbey.  And pressing her hands to her breast, she shivered.  If only she could summon him from the moonlight out there; if only she were a witch-could see him, know where he was, what doing!  For a fortnight now she had received no letter.  Every day since he had left she had read the casualty lists, with the superstitious feeling that to do so would keep him out of them.  She took up the Times.  There was just enough light, and she read the roll of honour—­till the moon shone in on her, lying on the floor, with the dropped journal....

But she was proud, and soon took grief to her room, as on that night after he left her, she had taken love.  No sign betrayed to the house her disaster; the journal on the floor, and the smell of the burnt milk which had boiled over, revealed nothing.  After all, she was but one of a thousand hearts which spent that moonlit night in agony.  Each night, year in, year out, a thousand faces were buried in pillows to smother that first awful sense of desolation, and grope for the secret spirit-place where bereaved souls go, to receive some feeble touch of healing from knowledge of each other’s trouble....

In the morning she got up from her sleepless bed, seemed to eat her breakfast, and went off to her hospital.  There she washed up plates and dishes, with a stony face, dark under the eyes.

The news came to Pierson in a letter from Thirza, received at lunch-time.  He read it with a dreadful aching.  Poor, poor little Nollie!  What an awful trouble for her!  And he, too, went about his work with the nightmare thought that he had to break the news to her that evening.  Never had he felt more lonely, more dreadfully in want of the mother of his children.  She would have known how to soothe, how to comfort.  On her heart the child could have sobbed away grief.  And all that hour, from seven to eight, when he was usually in readiness to fulfil the functions of God’s substitute to his parishioners, he spent in prayer of his own, for guidance how to inflict and heal this blow.  When, at last, Noel came, he opened. the door to her himself, and, putting back the hair from her forehead, said:  “Come in here a moment, my darling!” Noel followed him into the study, and sat down.  “I know already, Daddy.”  Pierson was more dismayed by this stoicism than he would have been by any natural out burst.  He stood, timidly stroking her hair, murmuring to her what he had said to Gratian, and to so many others in these days:  “There is no death; look forward to seeing him again; God is merciful” And he marvelled at the calmness of that pale face—­so young.