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Updated: June 28, 2025
Every one on leave has been recalled. We were packed like herrings on the boat. Garçon, bière the brunette kind!" "Tell us all about London," says Ayling hungrily. "What does it look like? Tell us!" We have been out here for the best part of five months now. Leave opened a fortnight ago, amid acclamations only to be closed again within a few days.
"Even if she hadn't seriously cared, or if, for that matter, she hadn't cared at all, it would seem that mere common decency.... It puts, frankly, a very unpleasant light on the whole affair.... Ayling was a gentleman, and you will forgive me for saying so, I'm sure just the decent sort to be imposed upon, to allow himself to be led into the most unfortunate affair."
"Have some of this, Major," he said. The burly Kemp roused himself and took the proffered cup gratefully. Then, looking round, he said "Hallo, Ayling! You arrived? Whereabouts in the line were you?" "I got cut off from the Battalion in the advance up Central Boyau, sir," said Ayling. "Everybody had disappeared by the time I got the machine-guns over the parapet.
And they waited, attentive and patient, for the motive to emerge, for the beginning of that complication between her daughter and Richard Ayling, which they believed was to be the crux of her narrative. And as her story progressed their bewilderment increased, for never, it appeared, had Bessie Lonsdale's daughter so much as heard of the existence of the man who lay dead at Homebury inn.
She forced herself to go on a little way, but when she came to the second turn in the road, she faced abruptly about and came back to the inn. Still Ayling was nowhere about. He was not in the garden; he was not in the coffee-room. She went to her own room and sat down with a book, but she could not read. So she went into the corridor, searching for some one of whom she might inquire.
Strange he hadn't thought of the automobiles and the electricity, and the difference they would make. The taxi backed suddenly, gears shifted, and drew up alongside the curb. Looking out, Ayling recognized the high, familiar street door of the club. Something about it had been changed, or replaced, he couldn't quite make out what.
Ford, no one appears to have the least idea who she might be. Mrs. Lonsdale, however, has been able to clear up a point which may, I fancy, make the identity of the woman less important than it might otherwise appear to be. Mrs. Lonsdale has known for some time of the serious condition of Mr. Ayling's heart. It was because of it, she tells me, that Mr. Ayling came home from India. Mrs.
"I see," said Ayling, surveying the position with real interest. He was beginning to enjoy selecting gun-emplacements which really mattered. It was a change from nine months of "eye-wash." When the German star-shell had spent itself they crossed the road, to the rear of the redoubt, and marked the other two emplacements in comparative safety now.
For an instant they both felt a deep constraint, and as he was getting out of his coat each wondered if the other had noticed it. Ayling turned about and stumbled awkwardly over a small hassock on the floor, and they both laughed, which helped them recover themselves. "How long has it really been?" she asked, as she faced him beside the fire. "Twenty-five years."
She tried to pull herself together to think; her thoughts were not reasoning thoughts, but unrelated, floating, detached.... Suddenly, by some strange alchemy of her mind, three things stood out clear. They stood out like the three facts of a simple syllogism. There was nothing she could do for Richard Ayling now.... No one knew she was here.... A train for London passed Homebury St.
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