She looked back with a kind of wonder to her old
happy, satisfied, and yes, unawakened life. She had
believed herself to be a woman of many friends, and
yet there was now not one human being to whom she
felt even tempted to tell her wonderful secret.

Busily occupied with the hundred and one trifles,
and the eager, generally successful little excursions
into philanthropy -- for she was an exceptionally kind,
warm-hearted woman -- which had filled her placid
widowhood, she had yet never made any real intimate.
The only exception had been Major Guthrie; it was
he who had drawn her into what had seemed for so
long their pleasant, quiet garden of friendship.

And now she realised that were she to tell any of
the people about her of the marvellous change which
had taken place in her heart, they would regard her
with great surprise, and yes, even with amusement.
All the world loves a young lover, but there is not
much sympathy to spare in the kind of world to which
Mary Otway belonged by birth, position, and long
association, for the love which appears, and sometimes
only attains full fruition, later in life.

As the days went on, each bringing its tale of exciting
and momentous events, there came over Mrs. Otway
a curious apathy with regard to the war, for to
her the one figure which had counted in the awful
drama now being enacted in France and Flanders had
disappeared from the vast stage where, as she now
recognised, she had seen only him. True, she glanced
over a paper each day, but she only sufficiently mastered
its contents to be able to reply intelligently to
those with whom her daily round brought her in
contact.

[[200]]

p199 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p200w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p201

v?