Five years ago on the pier of Dover he had watched a mail packet steam
away into darkness and rain, and had prayed that he might live until
this great moment should come. And he had lived and it had come. His
heart was lifted up in gratitude. It seemed to him that there was a
great burst of sunlight across the world, and that the world itself had
suddenly grown many-coloured and a place of joys. Ever since the night
when he had stood outside the War Office in Pall Mall, and Harry
Feversham had touched him on the arm and had spoken out his despair,
Lieutenant Sutch had been oppressed with a sense of guilt. Harry was
Muriel Feversham's boy, and Sutch just for that reason should have
watched him and mothered him in his boyhood since his mother was dead,
and fathered him in his youth since his father did not understand. But
he had failed. He had failed in a sacred trust, and he had imagined
Muriel Feversham's eyes looking at him with reproach from the barrier of
the skies. He had heard her voice in his dreams saying to him gently,
ever so gently: "Since I was dead, since I was taken away to where I
could only see and not help, surely you might have helped. Just for my
sake you might have helped,--you whose work in the world was at an end.
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