And on the wall near there was a brown mark on the wall-paper.

He remembered that it had been made by a splash from a bowl of disinfectant, and that he had stared at it one morning in a dumb torment which seemed endless, because Desmond had woke in pain and the morphia was slow to act.
_England_! His boy was dead--and his country had its back to the wall.

And he--what had he done for England, all these years of her struggle?
His carelessness, his indifference returned upon him--his mad and selfish refusal, day by day, to give his mind, or his body, or his goods, to the motherland that bore him.
'_Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by ?_' No--it had been nothing to him.

But Desmond, his boy, had given everything.

And the death-struggle was still going on.