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They returned to England a disgraced regiment. Now do you see the compulsion?" Stella Croyle turned the problem over in her mind. "Yes, I think I do," she said, but still was rather doubtful. Then she looked at the problem through Harry Luttrell's eyes. "Yes, I understand. The regiment must recover its good name in the next war.
In the tiny garden great shadows fell. The dusk gathered and Hillyard and Stella Croyle sat without a word in the darkening room. But Stella had lost her pride of carriage. On the mantelpiece the clock struck the hour six little tinkling silvery strokes. At that moment a guard was blowing his whistle on a platform of Waterloo and a train beginning slowly to move.
"I was not," answered Harry frankly. "I was shocked, but not surprised. For I knew Mrs. Croyle at a time when she was so tormented that she could not sleep at all. During that time she learnt to take drugs, and especially that drug in precisely that way that the newspaper described."
Stella Croyle was at this date twenty-six years old; and it was difficult to picture her any older. Partly because of her vivid colouring and because she was abrim with life; partly because in her straightness of limb and the clear treble of her voice, she was boyish.
She saw them drawn to one another across the hall and move into the dining-room side by side. She turned back with a little moan of disappointment into Stella Croyle's bedroom; and whilst she tidied it, more than once she stopped to wring her hands. Stella Croyle, however, kept her good spirits through the evening.
He took his hand from the donkey's neck, and Hillyard rode forward on the long and dreary stage to the one camping ground between Senga and Senaar. For a little while he wondered at this insistence of Harry Luttrell upon the physical health of Stella Croyle, and why he had been afraid. But when the dawn came his thoughts reverted to his own affairs.
"Oh, will you?" cried Stella Croyle, with a little burst of pleasure. After all, Hillyard was the great man of the evening, and that he should consider her out of all that company was pleasant. "I will get my cloak." Throughout the supper-party Hillyard had been at a loss to discover in Stella Croyle the woman whom Hardiman had led him to expect. Her spirits were high, but unforced.
A phrase which Stella Croyle had used Harry had feared to become "the slovenly soldier" began to take on its meaning. "On the Somme the shame was wiped out. Led by such men as Harry well, you know what happened. Harry Luttrell came home freed at last from an overwhelming obsession. He looked about him with different eyes, and there you were!
"I have put out the blue dress with the silver underskirt, madam," said Jenny Prask, knowing well that nothing in Stella Croyle's wardrobe set off so well her dark and fragile beauty. "Very well, Jenny." Stella Croyle answered listlessly. She was discouraged by her experience of that afternoon. She had come to Rackham Park, certain of one factor upon her side, but very certain of that.
His face was a trifle too delicate, perhaps, to go with those remorseless sharp decisions which must be made by the men who win careers. "I know that you can't go through the world without hurting people," cried Hardiman. "Neither you nor any one else, except the limpets. And you won't escape hurting Stella Croyle, by abandoning your chances. Your love-affair will end all of that kind do.
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