Peter walked ahead unbound. He could not keep his mind on the journey with the . His thoughts winged from Lonegan at Warsaw, to The States'' office and home, as if carrying the message of his own end.... Boylan might finally break out with the details.... The personal part ended suddenly, like an essential formality, leaving him a sorrow for Boylan and his mother especially. His full now opened to Berthe Wyndham.  
He was ordered to turn twice to the left. They had left the little stone court, entering the main street, and back again into the first side street for a short distance to a narrow stairway, between low mercantile houses now used for hospitals. Up the creaking way; the sentry within answered the sentry without and opened the door. A long narrow room with a single square of light from the roof, and Moritz Abel came forward.
 
“I'm sorry,” the poet said. “I had hoped—”
 
“Yes, we had hoped,” Peter replied with a smile.
 
Duke Fallows appeared from the shadows and hastily pressed his hand. Abel had turned toward the square of light, as if there were still another.
 
She came forward like a wraith—into the light—and still toward him, her lips parted, her eyes intent upon him. The sentry who had brought him turned, down the stairs. The door was shut by the other sentry. Her lips moved, but there was nothing that he heard. With one hand still in his, she turned and led him back under the daylight to the shadows.... He heard Moritz Abel's voice repeating that he had been a poor protector. Fallows ....
 
There was much to it, hardly like a human episode—the silence so far as words between them, the tragedy in each soul that the other must go; the tearing readjustments to the end of all work in the world, and the swift reversion of the mind to its innumerable broken ends of activity; and above all, the deep joy of their being together in this last intense weariness.... She wore her white veiled cap and ; having followed the summons from her work. There was a chair in the shadows, and she pressed him down in her old way, and took her own place before him (as in her own house) half-sitting, half-kneeling.
 
“Peter, I could not believe—until I touched you. I was praying just here, that you would not come—”
 
“I am very grateful to be here,” he said.
 
“I was so lonely. I was afraid of death. Fallows talked to me and Moritz Abel—but it did not do. I was thinking of you at the battle, as if you were a thousand miles away—as if I were waiting, as a mother for you, waiting for tidings with a babe in her arms—”
 
She paused and he said, “Tell me,” knowing that she must speak on.
 
“...It was just like that. I prayed that you would live—that you would not be brought here—that the time would pass swiftly. We have been here hours. They came for us soon after you went. We were all together in that place—all at our work. They led us here through the streets. It seemed very far. Something caught in the throat when the soldiers looked at me. I know what my father felt when he kept saying, 'It's all right. Yes, this is all right.' I know just how the surprise and the him from time to time, and made him say that.... Then we were here. I wanted this darker chair. They came—I mean our good friends—Fallows came and talked to me, and Moritz Abel, but it wasn't what I seemed to need. Ah, Peter, I'm talking in circles—”
 
Something warned him that she was going to break, but he could not speak quickly enough. The human frightened little girl that he had never seen before in Berthe Wyndham, was so revealing to his heart that he was held in . She seemed so and tender, as she said :
 
“We must be very dear to each other—”
 
There were tears in her eyes now, and her breast rose and fell with emotion, as to Mowbray as if it were his own.
 
“I did pray for them not to bring you here,” she added. “If I had not left Warsaw, you would not be here now—”
 
“Listen—oh, Berthe, don't say that. Please, listen—”
 
The current was turned on in his brain, thoughts faster and faster:
 
“It would all have been a military movement if you had not come. I would not have understood Spenski, nor the real Samarc, nor Kohlvihr as he is, nor the charges of . The coming of Moritz Abel, words I have heard, the street, the singing, the field, the future—why, it's all different because you came. I am not dismayed by this. I have had a great life here. If this is our last day—the matter is lifted out of our hands. And dear Berthe, what do you think it means to me—this last hour together?”
 
“What does it mean, Peter?'
 
“I look into your face, and know that I've found something the world tried to make me believe wasn't here. Everything I did as a boy and man tried to show me that there isn't anything in a man finding a woman. My mother knew differently, but every time she wanted to tell me something happened. Another voice broke in, or perhaps she saw I wasn't or ready. But I know now—and it didn't come to me until here in Judenbach—”
 
“She must have known,” Berthe whispered.
 
Fallows drew near. He seemed calm but very weary. “May I bring up my chair for a little while?” he asked as an old nurse might.
 
“Please do,” they said.
 
“Thank you,” Fallows answered, and returned with his wooden chair. “If you change the subject I shall have to go.”
 
“I was just saying that I had found something in the world that my mother knew all the time,” Peter explained.
 
“Oh, I say, this is important. Moritz must come in,” Fallows told them.
 
They nodded laughingly.
 
“Moritz,” he called. “Here's a little boy and girl telling stories—ve............