"You don't shy at the notion of the par--the announcement in the _Siege Gazette_, I mean?..."

"Upon the contrary, I approve of it," said the Mother, and walked on very fast, for the bells of the Catholic Church were ringing for Benediction.

"Is it good-night, or may I come in?" Beauvayse whispered to Lynette in the porch.

She dipped her slender fingers in the little holy-water font beside the door, and held them out to him.

"Come in," she answered, and held white, wet fingers out to him. He touched them with a puzzled smile.

"Am I to----? Ah, I remember!"

Their eyes met, and the golden radiance in hers pa.s.sed into his blood. He bared his high, fair head as she made the sign of the Cross, and followed her in and up the nave as Father Wix, in purple Lenten stole over the snowy cotta starched and ironed by Sister Tobias's capable hands, began to intone the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary. The Sisters were already in their places--a double row of black-draped figures, the Mother at the end of the first row, Lady Hannah in the chair beside her, where Lynette had always sat until now. It was not without a pang that the one saw her place usurped by a stranger; it was piercing pain to the other to feel the strange presence at her side. But something had already come between these two, dividing them. Something invisible, impalpable as air, but nevertheless thrusting them apart with a force that might not be resisted.

Only the elder of the two as yet knew clearly what it meant. The younger was too dizzy with her first heady draught from the cup of joy, held to her lips by the strong, beautifully-shaped brown hand that rested on Beauvayse's knee as he sat, or propped up Beauvayse's chin as he knelt, stiff as a young crusader on a monument, beside her. But the Mother knew.

Would not the G.o.d Who had been justly offended in her, His vowed servant, that day, exact to the last t.i.ttle the penalty? She knew He would.

Rosary ended, the thin, kind-eyed little elderly priest preached, taking for the text of his discourse the Introit from the Office of Quinquagesima.

"_Esto mihi in Deum protectorum, et in loc.u.m refugii, ut salvum me facias._"

"Be Thou unto me a G.o.d, a protector, and a place of refuge, to save me: for Thou art my strength...."

Then the _O Salutaris_ was sung, and followed by the Litany of the Holy Name.

The church was crowded. A Catholic congregation is always devout, but these people, well-dressed or ill-dressed, prosperous or poor, pale-faced and hollow-eyed every one, joined in the office with pa.s.sion. The responses came like the beating of one wave of human anguish upon the Rock of Ages.

"_Have mercy on us!_"

Hungry, they cried to One Who had hungered. Sinking with weariness, they appealed to One Who had known labours, faintings, agonies, and desolations.

"_Have mercy on us!_"

He had drunk of Death for them, had been buried and had risen again.

Death was all about them. They could hear the beating of his wings, could see the red sweep of his blood-wet, dripping scythe. And they prayed as they had never prayed before these things befell:

"_Have mercy on us!_"

They sang the _Tantum Ergo_, and the cloud of incense rose from the censer in the priest's hand. Then, at the thin, sweet tinkle of the bell, and the first white gleam of the Unspeakable Mystery upheld by the servant of the Altar, the heads bowed and sank as when a sudden wind sweeps over a field of ripened corn. Only one or two remained unmoved, one of these a man's head, young and crisply-waved, and golden....

And then came the orderly crowding to the door, and they were outside under the great violet sky, throbbing with splendid stars, breathing the tainted air that came from the laagers and the trenches. But oh, was there ever a sweeter night, following upon a sweeter day?

Beauvayse's hand found and pressed Lynette's. She looked up and saw his eyes shining in the starlight. He looked down and saw the Convent lily transformed into a very rose of womanhood.

"I am on duty at Staff Bombproof South to-night. What I would give to be free to walk home with you!"

Lady Hannah's jangling laugh came in.

"Haven't you had the whole day? Greedy, unconscionable young man! Say good-night to her, and be off and get some food into you. Don't say you haven't any appet.i.te. I am hungry enough to be interested even in minced mule and spatch-c.o.c.ked locusts, after all this. Good-night! I must kiss you again, child! I hope you don't mind?"

Lynette gave her cheek, asking:

"Where is the Mother?"

The voice of Sister Tobias answered out of the purplish darkness:

"She has gone on with Sister Hilda-Antony and Sister Cleophee, dearie. She is going to sleep at the Convent with them, and I was to give you her love, and say good-night."

Say good-night! On this of all nights was Lynette to be dismissed without even the Mother's kiss? She gave back Beauvayse's parting hand-pressure almost mechanically. Then she heard his voice, close at her ear, say pantingly:

"No one will see.... Please, dearest!"

She turned her head, and their lips met under cover of the pansy-coloured darkness.... Then he was gone with Lady Hannah, and Lynette was walking home to the Convent bombproof, explaining to the astonished Sisters that the Mother knew; that the Mother approved of her engagement to Lord Beauvayse; and that they would probably be married very soon. Before the Relief ...

"'Before the Relief.' Well, no one but Our Lord knows when that's to be.... And so you're very happy, are you, dearie?"

Even as she gave her shy a.s.sent in answer to Sister Tobias's question, its commonplace homeliness, like the feeling of the thick dust and the scattered debris underfoot, brought back Lynette for a moment out of the golden, diamond-dusted, pearl-gemmed dream-world in which she had been straying, to wonder, Was she really very happy?

She asked herself the question sitting with the Sisters at their little scanty supper. She asked herself as she knelt with them in prayer, as she lay in bed, the Mother's place vacant beside her--Was she happy after all?

She had drunk sweetness, but there had been a tang of something in the cup that cloyed the palate and sickened the soul. She had learned the love of man, and in a measure it had cast out fear, that had been her earlier lesson.

To be held and taken and made his completely, what must it be like? She glowed in the darkness at the thought. And then the recollection of a ruthless strength that had rent away the veil of innocence from a woman-child surged back upon her.

Just think. Suppose you laid your hand in the warm, strong clasp that thrilled delight to every nerve, and set your heart beating, beating, and, drawn by the shining grey-green jewel-eyes and the mysterious, wooing smile upon the beautiful lips, and the coaxing, caressing tones of the voice that so allured, you gave up all else that had been so dear, and went away with him? What then? Suppose----

Suppose the smiling face of Love should turn out to be nothing but a mask hiding the gross and brutal leer of l.u.s.t, what then? She saw that other man's dreadful face, painted in hot and living colours upon the darkness.

She writhed as if to tear her lips from the savage, furious mouth. She shuddered and grew cold there in the sultry heat. The clasp of the protecting mother-arms might have driven away her terror, but she was alone. It would have been sweet to be alone that night if she had been happy.

Why had the Mother shunned her? She knew that she had. Why had she felt, even with the glamour of _his_ presence about her, and the music of his voice in her ears, that all was not well?

Why, even with the lifting of her burden, in the unutterable relief of hearing, from the lips that had been her law, that her dreadful secret need never be revealed, had she felt consternation and alarm? The words were written in fiery letters, on the murky dark of the bombproof, where the tiny lamp that had hung before the Tabernacle on the altar of the Convent chapel now burned, a twinkling red star, before the silver Crucifix that hung upon the east wall.

"He is not to be told. I command you never to tell him!"

The doubt germinated and presently pushed through a little spear. Had those lips given right counsel or wrong? Ought he to be told? Was it dishonest, was it traitorous, to hide the truth? And yet, what are the lives of even the upright, and clean, and continent among men, compared with the life of a girl bred as she had been? The sin had not been hers.

She, the victim, was blameless. And yet, and yet ...

To this girl, who had learned to see the Face of Christ and of His Mother reflected in one human face that had smiled down upon her, waking in the little white bed in the Convent infirmary from the long, recuperating sleep that turns the tide of brain-fever, the thought that a shadow of deceit could mar its earnest, candid purity was torture. Months back they had said to her--the lips that had given her the first kiss she had received since a dying woman's cold mouth touched the sleeping face of a yellow-haired baby held to her in a strong man's shaking hands, as the trek-waggon rolled and rumbled over the veld:

"The man who may one day be your husband will have the right to know."

It was a different voice to the one that had commanded, "You are never to tell him!" Lynette lay listening to those two voices until the alarm-clock belled and the Sisters rose at midnight for matins. Then she lay listening to the soft murmur of voices in the dark, as the red lamp glimmered before the silver Christ upon the wall. The nuns needed no light, knowing the office by heart:

"_Delicta quis intelligit? ab occultis meis munda me, et ab alienis parce servo tuo_"--"Who can comprehend what sin is? Cleanse me from my hidden sins, and from those of others save Thy servant."