Chapter 35

"It was the strangest experience of my existence. It seemed suddenly to
change me to another type of man."

He said it to the Duchess as he sat with her in her private room at
Eaton Square. He had told her the whole story of his week at Darreuch
and she had listened with an interest at moments almost breathless.

"Do you feel that you shall remain the new type of man, or was it only a
temporary phase?" she inquired.

"I told her that I felt I was living on a new planet. London is the old
planet and I have returned to it. But not as I left it. Something has
come back with me."

"It must have seemed another planet," the Duchess pondered. "The
stillness of huge unbroken moors--no war--no khaki in sight--utter peace
and remoteness. A girl brought back to life by pure love, drawing a
spirit out of the unknown to her side on earth."

"She is like a spirit herself--but that she remains Robin--in an
extraordinary new blooming."

"Yes, she remains Robin." The Duchess thought it out slowly. "Not once
did she disturb you or herself by remembering that you were her
husband."

"A girl who existed on the old planet would have remembered, and I
should have detested her. To her, marriage means only Donal. The form we
went through she sees only as a supreme sacrifice I made for the sake of
Donal's child. If you could have heard her heart-wrung cry, 'There will
be no one to defend you! Oh! What shall I do!'"

"The stainless little soul of her!" the Duchess exclaimed. "Her world
holds only love and tenderness. Her goodbye to you meant that in her
penitence she wanted to take you into it in the one way she feels most
sacred. She will not die. She will live to give you the child. If it is
a son there will be a Head of the House of Coombe."

"On the new planet one ceases to feel the vital importance of 'houses,'"
Coombe half reflected aloud.

"Even on the old planet," the Duchess spoke as a woman very tired, "one
is beginning to contemplate changes in values."

* * * * *

The slice of a house in Mayfair had never within the memory of man been
so brilliant. The things done in it were called War Work and
necessitated much active gaiety. Persons of both sexes, the majority of
them in becoming uniform, flashed in and out in high spirits. If you
were a personable and feminine creature, it was necessary to look as
much like an attractive boy as possible when you were doing War Work. If
one could achieve something like leggings in addition to a masculine cut
of coat, one could swagger about most alluringly. There were numbers of
things to be