Godfrey read this awful paragraph twice and looked at the date of the paper. It was nearly two months old.
"So she was dead when she came to me. Oh! now I understand," he muttered to himself, and then, had not a passing native servant caught him, he would have fallen to the ground. It was one of the ten thousand minor tragedies of the world war, that is all.
Three months later, still very crippled and coughing badly, because of the injury to his lung, he reported himself in London, and once more saw the Under-Secretary who had sent him out to East Africa. There he sat in the same room, at the same desk, looking precisely the same.
"I am sorry, Sir, that my mission has failed through circumstances beyond my control. I can only add that I did my best," he said briefly.
"I know," answered the official; "it was no fault of yours if those black brutes tried to murder you. Everything goes wrong in that cursed East Africa. Now go home and get yourself fit again, my dear fellow," he went on very kindly, adding, "Your services will not be overlooked."
"I have no home, and I shall never be fit again," replied Godfrey, and left the room.
"I forgot," thought the Under-Secretary. "His wife was killed in a Zeppelin raid. Odd that she should have been taken and he left."
Then, with a sigh and a shrug of the shoulders he turned to his business.
Godfrey went to the little house at Hampstead where he used to live while he was studying as a lad, for here Mrs. Parsons was waiting for him. Then for the first time he gave way and they wept in each other's arms.
"We were too happy, Nurse," he said.
"Yes," she answered, "love like hers wasn't for this world, and more than once she said to me that she never expected to see you again in the flesh, though I thought she meant it was you who would go, as might have been expected. Stop, I have something for you."
Going to a desk she produced from it a ring, that with the turquoise hearts; also a canvas-covered book.
"That's her diary," she said, "she used to write in it every day."
That night Godfrey read many beautiful and sacred things in this diary. From it he learned that the shock of his supposed death had caused Isobel to miscarry and made her ill for some time, though underneath the entries about her illness and the false news of his death she had written: "He is not dead. I know that he is not dead."