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The tragic deaths of Barbara and Jamie cast a gloom over everyone who had known them, but especially over Mary and Stephen. Again and again Stephen blamed herself for having left Jamie on that fatal evening; if she had only insisted upon staying, the tragedy might never have happened, she might somehow have been able to impart to the girl the courage and strength to go on living. But great as the shock undoubtedly was to Stephen, to Mary it was even greater, for together with her very natural grief, was a new and quite unexpected emotion, the emotion of fear. She was suddenly afraid, and now this fear looked out of her eyes and crept into her voice when she spoke of Jamie.

“To end in that way, to have killed herself; Stephen, it’s so awful that such things can happen⁠—they were like you and me.” And then she would go over every sorrowful detail of Barbara’s last illness, every detail of their finding of Jamie’s body.

“Did it hurt, do you think, when she shot herself? When you shot that wounded horse at the front, he twitched such a lot, I shall never forget it⁠—and Jamie was all alone that night, there was no one there to help in her pain. It’s all so ghastly; supposing it hurt her!”

Useless for Stephen to quote the doctor who had said that death had been instantaneous; Mary was obsessed by the horror of the thing, and not only its physical horror either, but by the mental and spiritual suffering that must have strengthened the will to destruction.

“Such despair,” she would say, “such utter despair⁠ ⁠… and that was the end of all their loving. I can’t bear it!” And then she would hide her face against Stephen’s strong and protective shoulder.

Oh, yes, there was now little room for doubt, the whole business was preying badly on Mary.

Sometimes strange, amorous moods would seize her, in which she must kiss Stephen rather wildly: “Don’t let go of me, darling⁠—never let go. I’m afraid; I think it’s because of what’s happened.”

Her kisses would awaken a swift response, and so in these days that were shadowed by death, they clung very desperately to life with the passion they had felt when first they were lovers, as though only by constantly feeding that flame could they hope to ward off some unseen disaster.