They might be in hospital badly wounded, or if Sarratt had been made prisoner, they had probably shared his fate.

'And if your husband has been taken prisoner, as we all hope,' said the gentle woman at the office--'it will be at least a fortnight before we can trace him.

Meanwhile we are going on with all other possible enquiries.' Nelly had those phrases by heart.

The phrases too of that short letter--those few lines--the last she had ever received from George, written two days before the battle, which had reached her in Westmorland before her departure.
That letter lay now on her bosom, just inside the folds of her blouse, where her hand could rest upon it at any moment.

How passionately she had hoped for another, a fragment perhaps torn from his notebook in the trenches, and sent back by some messenger at the last moment! She had heard of that happening to so many others.