Then he told her.

"I wrote to you when I was at Ballymartin," he said, "but I did not post the letter. I brought it with me. I meant to destroy it because I thought it was too emotional, and then I thought that perhaps I had better let you see it so that you might judge me, not just as I am now, talking to you quietly like this, but as I was when I wrote it!"

He took the letter from his pocket and gave it to her.

"I had to tell you, Mary. I couldn't marry you without letting you know what kind of man I am. I'm too frightened to go to the Front. At the bottom of all my excuses, that's the truth."

She did not speak, but stood with his letter in her hands, turning it over....

"I've tried to persuade myself," he went on, "that I'm of special account, that I ought not to go to the war, but I know very well that in a time like this, no one is of special account. Gilbert said something like that at Tre'Arrdur Bay when I told him that his life was of greater value than the life of ... of a clerk. I suppose, the finer a man is, the more willing he is to take his share in war, and if that's true, I'm not really a fine man. I'm simply a coward, hoarding up my life in a cupboard, like a miser hoarding up his money. I should have been the first to spend myself ... like Gilbert and Ninian. I'm the only one of the Improved Tories who hasn't gone! ... Oh, I couldn't offer you myself, dear. I'm too mean ... I'm a failure in fineness.... I used to feel contempt for Jimphy Jayne ... but he didn't hesitate for a moment. It never entered his head not to go. The moment the war began, Gilbert enlisted, and I suppose Ninian must have left that railway the very minute he heard the news. I was never quite ... never quite on their level, Mary, and I don't suppose I ever shall be now!"

She moved slightly, as if she were tired of remaining in one position, and were shifting to an easier one, but still she did not speak, nor did she raise her eyes to look at him.

"I'm not fit to be your husband," he said. "I'm not fit to be any woman's husband, but much less yours. Even now, when I 'm standing here talking to you in this safety, the thought of ... of being out there makes me shiver with fear. It's the thought of ... of dying!... I think and think of all those young chaps, all the fellows I knew, robbed of their right to live and love, as I love you, and work and make their end in decency and peace ... and I can't bear it. I want to save myself from the wreckage ... to hide myself in safety until this ... this horror is ended!" He paused for a while, as if he were searching for words and then he went on. "There was an officer in my carriage to-day ... going on to Whimple ... and he told me about poison gas ... the men died in frightful agony, he said ... and then he talked about machine guns.... 'They can perforate a man like a postage stamp,' he said.... Isn't it vile, Mary?"

Her head was still bent, and as she did not make an answer to him, he turned to look away from her. He remembered how Sheila Morgan, in her anger at his cowardice, had struck him in the face and had furiously bidden him to leave her.... Mary would not strike him, but she, too, would bid him to go from her....

He felt her hand on his arm.

"Quinny!" she said very softly, and he turned to find her standing nearer to him and looking up at him with no less love than she had looked at him before he had made his confession to her.

"I don't love you, Quinny, only for what's fine in you," she said, and her speech was full of hesitation as if she could not adequately express her meaning. "I love you ... for all of you. I just take the bad with the good, and ... and make the best of it, dear!"

"You still want me, Mary?..."

"My dear," she said, half laughing and half crying, "I've always wanted you!... Oh, what's the good," she went on with an impetuous rush of words, "of loving a man only when he comes up to your expectations. I want to love you even when you don't come up to my expectations, Quinny, and I do love you, dear. It hasn't anything to do with whether you're brave or not brave, or good or bad, or great or common. I just love you ... don't you see?... because you're you!..."

He stared at her incredulously. He had been so certain that she would bid him leave her when she learned of his cowardice.

"But!..."

"Come home," she said. "You must be very tired, and cold!"

She put her arm in his, and drew him homewards, and he yielded to her like a little child.

As they turned the corner of the apple-orchard, they could see lights shining from the windows of the Manor, making a warm splash on the snow that lay in drifts about the garden. There was a great quietness that was broken now and then by the twittering of birds in the hedges as they nestled for the night, or the cries made by the screech-owls, hooting in the copse.